


Collateral

by Blueinkedfrost



Category: Murder Princess
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Don't Have to Know Canon, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-12
Updated: 2014-03-19
Packaged: 2018-01-08 12:33:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 30,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1132698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blueinkedfrost/pseuds/Blueinkedfrost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Milano Entolasia, maid to Princess Alita, is prepared to die for Forland. But when Milano survives a blood-soaked coup, she learns there's more danger coming, danger which could destroy the country she loves and much more. Milano and Falis, the fierce bounty hunter trapped in Alita's body, set out to save the kingdom Alita loved. Alternate universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Survival

_Summary:_ Milano Entolasia, maid to Princess Alita, is prepared to die for Forland. But when Milano survives a blood-soaked coup, she learns there's more danger coming, danger which could destroy the country she loves and much more. Milano and Falis, the fierce bounty hunter trapped in Alita's body, set out to save the kingdom Alita loved. AU.

This is an alternative universe about Milano Entolasia, when she survives the attack.

Dedicated to anyone who's liked the first Milano Entolasia as well as the other enjoyable characters in Murder Princess, and especially to the person who once nominated the original Milano Entolasia to the Yuletide fic exchange.

 _A/N:_ I relied on the Ayako fansub while writing this and apologise for any inaccuracies, particularly in Jodo's and Milano's job descriptions.

—

Princess Alita was shy, Princess Alita was a bit of a crybaby, Princess Alita was mannerly, Princess Alita was kind, Princess Alita was her dearest friend, and it was an honour to be Princess Alita's lady-in-waiting and her maid.

And now Milano Entolasia stood wearing Princess Alita's clothes and jewels and powder in her hair. Now Milano Entolasia stood and waited with blood gushing about Princess Alita's boots. Now Milano stood by the corpse of the King. Now Milano watched one by one as friends—guards—childhood playmates—adult friends—unarmed ministers—died screaming.

An Entolasia always served Forland's rulers. Milano's grandfather was by her side and witnessed this alike. She prayed they would not kill an old man. They were killing everyone else. Milano owed her kingdom to stand and to substitute for Alita. Perhaps it was shock that prevented her from turning and running uselessly. Or perhaps she too was a soldier for Forland like those others who did not run away. Captain Rodorim, the second to fight, dead bravely like the soldier he was. Trinpano, who lay with a white face and legs cut away from his body. Saul, whom she knew only from the cut of his coat now when his face was all red. Ceto, ribcage torn from his body like red-white wings. Lydian, who screamed seven feet away from her and had not yet stopped. Every second was one more second that Princess Alita had to reach safety.

Grandfather had seen her father Angelo and her brothers Fiorenze and Taranto and her uncle Aurelio dead for Forland the same. A male Entolasia was soldier or body servant and prepared to die for Forland. They did not warn that others would die before your eyes.

The noise ended. Lydian is dead, Milano Entolasia thought. He taught me to roll dice. Lydian is dead and the last line of defence is gone.

The robot woman with the metal hands began to speak—

—

Alita Forland cried when she scraped her knee. Alita Forland wept for days when kittens were drowned. Alita Forland was frightened of millipedes and rats. Alita Forland watched all of her brother's tourneys to the very end with a white face and red cuts on the inside of her palms where her nails bit into the skin, below the notice of any except for Milano.

Alita Forland did not draw katana and wazikashi and murder dozens of goblins and defeat the robot woman with ease, and walk through blood to rest a heeled boot upon her family's throne. Yet this was Alita Forland's body leading fellow warriors to fight.

Milano Entolasia saw a shinigami throw a scythe that wheeled through necks and saw an impossibly big purple man save her at the moment the robot woman's eyes flashed that her deception was known by the murderer behind them.

It is my honour to substitute for Alita Forland, Milano had resolved in herself, and found a smile at the last to defy them. The people coming on the mechanical vehicle saved her and saved Grandfather, but they were too late for all the others.

The smoke from the explosion cleared. Milano stared at her friend and saw nothing of Alita in the eyes of the woman in the blood-spattered dress.

 _Alita Forland_ , she thought, her mind as slow as summer treacle. _Alita Forland...has saved her country._

And on the ground Milano Entolasia saw the small body of a dark-haired woman with weathered skin and lean, trained muscles, beside the body of all the other goblins. Shock from the explosion had slain her. Milano did not yet know.

A bootheel rested on Forland's throne, a drawn sword driven into its velvet dais. "I am the child of my father. I am the princess who has returned to claim her rightful throne by the sword. I am Alita Forland!"

—


	2. Bargaining

"Where the hell do I get the bounty? How the hell can I not be dead? What the hell is this, Dominikov? Who the hell is the redhead and why the hell is she dressed like me? Dominikov, I want some answers right now!"

Generous, gentle, refined Princess Alita who never forgot her p's and qs and sweetness and courtesy screamed at her death-marked shinigami and hadn't lowered her bloody sword.

"You an impostor for the throne, huh? You one of those bad guys dressed up to be me? You want to step up and take my father's seat too? Bring it, ginger! I'll beat you just like the rest to the bounty! You got any damn money on you?"

Blood-crimson eyes stared from the Princess' blood-spattered face, and bizarrely it reminded Milano of the time when she and Alita had escaped supervision to eat all the strawberries they could find in one of the castle fields, Alita's face wet with juice almost the colour of Alita's own eyes.

"She is not Alita, Grandfather," Milano said. Her life had hung by a thread and it did not yet collapse. Entolasia men served the crown with their lives. Entolasia women could show no less spine when a Princess saved the kingdom of Forland. "She has saved us from Akamashi—at least for the time being..." He had escaped and she would think on the ramifications of that after the dead were buried.

"I am Milano Entolasia," she said, as calmly as she could, with the steel-ice tone that nobly-born matriarch courtiers used to gain control of all conversations. To her surprise it paused the tirade of the woman who was not Alita. "Milano Entolasia, granddaughter of Jodo Entolasia, lady-in-waiting and maid to the Princess of Forland. I welcome you and your friends to Forland.

"For your actions this day, the kingdom of Forland is indebted to Princess Alita. We will express our gratitude when Forland is saved from difficulties. We will have you and your companions safely accommodated; we will—clean—" Her voice did not break over that. "My grandfather and I will parley with you in seclusion, and we will find a solution..."

Then the woman in Alita's body told her the identity of the soul in the small dark girl lying still and quiet in her broken body, and Milano gave way to screaming her grief.

—

Milano was composed. She did not need to be formal to the wandering knight Falis; the bounty hunter was cheerfully frank and mannerless. It was refreshing, or would have been if Falis were not a ghost in the shell of Milano's dearest friend.

On the mantelpiece behind Princess Alita was the porcelain owl, Miss Shoo-Roo, the handle of the katana almost knocking the ornament over. Alita would never have done that. Milano gave the owl to her and she treasured it as if it were imperial diamond rather than simple porcelain—loved a friend's gift more than royal jewellery. That simple gesture brought home to Milano that Alita was gone, and for Forland's sake they would all deal with realities.

"Falis, we can't pay your bounty if we don't have a ruler to pay it. Please stay to protect the kingdom of Forland." _Or else you have already received payment and are unable to return it_. _.._ but Milano could not voice that argument without bitterness now. Keep it in reserve.

"So, are you pulling a scam on me, ginger? How many times are you and the old gnome gonna make me save this kingdom?" But Falis paced the room and spoke in part to herself. Her two friends Pete Armstrong and Dominikov followed her with their eyes, or in the shinigami's case with what he had below his mask that passed for eyes. "It's strange. The other one used almost the same words as you. Protect this kingdom with all your strength, Alita said. I will be the collateral, she said. We fell together from the cliff when she was stupid enough to crash into me fleeing from the tree demon—"

Jodo motioned as if to stop the reminiscences, for knowing what happened to the dead was of less import to the kingdom than preserving those still alive; but Milano craved to know of Alita's fate.

"Our bodies swapped," Falis said. "Dominikov says that when two people face death together their souls swap, but when it's Dominikov saying it you can't know if it's true. I thought she was dead. I thought I was dead. I wasn't going to hunt the bounty for her, until she looked into my eyes and said what she did. The princess was your friend, wasn't she?" Falis looked at Milano, and for all the brusqueness of her speech there was no intended malice in her crimson eyes. "Alita was the collateral. I had her body and everything she was, and she'd see I saved her kingdom. We took her to the fight and then..." Milano refused to look down at Falis' swift, explicit gesture. "If you're a mercenary you're used to people dying on you. But I take it personally when the defenceless get taken out. I'll stay until onion-head gets his."

 _Grandfather knows that Akamashi cannot be the only enemy of Forland._ Milano saw Jodo give a subtle nod.

Milano walked with Princess Alita in the gardens under the plane-trees, overlooking the flocks of well-fed royal sheep grazing on the hills. The winds bathed their faces, and the sun beamed warmly down on Milano's freckles. Milano loved the outdoors: she could milk a cow as easily as she made tea, curry a horse and butcher a lamb as easily as shape court hairstyles and lay a table. Forland was a small kingdom dependent on its farms, and even courtiers did not know nothing of such matters. A green maple leaf blew past Milano's hair, the scent of syrup already in the summer air.

"Forland is a small kingdom and the people are close to their ruler," Milano said. "Many people know you, Princess Alita. You are shy, but you are always kind and polite. You have an amazing talent for swordplay—your older brother Kaito does too, so that can be an explanation..."

"You think this Kaito's a fighter? Do I get to duel him without breaking the pact?" Princess Alita said, and laughed as if she'd meant it for a joke. "Just tell me the princess lessons...if you have to." She gave a yawn so wide it could have housed a beehive.

"You're doing that on purpose, aren't you? Being a princess is like being a soldier! Mouth closed, shoulders high, eyes in front! ...Like being an _elegant_ soldier! Walk slow and graceful! Give yourself a chance to look at all the people curtseying to you! Your Majesty, Your Majesty! Good day, and might you have a cup of tea? Might you politely listen to this petition, Your Majesty, and say something nice about it to make me feel better? Might you honour me with this dance, Your Majesty, at this charity ball to relieve the distress of the people?"

"Crap, I can't do that!" Alita's face drew itself in indelicate horror at Milano's jokingly outstretched hand—Milano distracted herself from the pang of old dances with Alita, learning the steps with her. Alita would always have given her hand.

"Anyone can waltz!" Milano said. One of her few precious memories of her father was his teaching her; dancing with him about the lower rooms below a royal ball, the music and footsteps and laughter echoing above their heads. "A talented fighter like you...are you not up to the challenge, Cavalier Falis?"

She hadn't expected the Princess to reach in and grab her by her upper arms, whirling her above the grass with her skirt and petticoats flying in the wind and hair and bodice untucking themselves. It was like being spun by her father long ago—only not so, with Alita's face wild and laughing in an expression that could never have belonged to Alita. Milano clung to the Princess' arms and let her head spin and dizzy. Alita's features blurred, and Milano saw Falis the adventurer looking out of tempestuous crimson eyes—

When Falis lowered her, Milano took the advantage and stepped in, keeping Falis' arms where they were around her. "Let us waltz, Princess—I am the cavalier and you the princess." She drew up the Princess' right hand with her own, and slid her left around Falis' shoulder, feeling the warmth of their bodies meeting. Alita had been slightly taller and fuller-figured than she. "Your body should know this, the number of times we practiced..." Milano stopped herself with a smile that became genuine; she gently maneuvered Falis into place. "In dancing we cooperate, not fight, and that creates something that looks beautiful."

Step, step, turn. The plane-trees were their ballroom and creeping fronds of willow their festive decorations. Milano saw Falis' back grow straighter and felt her start to grow accustomed to her partner. Box step. Progression. Promenade. Falis stepped with an easy athleticism, becoming light on her feet as gentle snowflakes—but there was a current of cold strength that ran through her hands. The sheath of her katana was prominent against the dress of maiden's white. Milano kept leading, knowing that in most other things it was the Princess who should have to. She advanced on Falis and drew her into a close while the music she imagined spun in her head. Their bodies drew suddenly together. Alita's—Falis'—skin was warm, her heart beating steadily, the distance vanished between them. And to Milano's surprise, as she looked at the expression in Falis' eyes, the fierce warrior's face flushed a distinct pink. Their faces were scarcely an inch apart.

_Falis, so unashamed as to sleep naked instead of a proper nightgown...blushing at this?_

"...and that is the 'close' in a waltz," Milano said softly, spinning back from her partner once more as a graceful gentleman should always allow the lady time to breathe. "Now you will have no trouble dancing a little."

Falis folded her arms with imperial regality—suitably enough. "Got it, ginger—" Sharply she raised her head and stared with her nose raised as if she sniffed the air. All was quiet. Milano barely heard even the whispering of leaves.

She realised: _there had been guards here._ The remains of Forland's garrison. For the Princess was the one they had to guard for the realm's safety, and the only cavalry regiment overseas with Prince Kaito in his military service—

( _that which had already decimated them; and now Milano knew how her brothers must have died—_ )

Falis' hands were upon the Princess-of-the-Cranes. The sword flashed silver-blue and already the warrior ran.

 _Who is dead? Who is dead again? Save this kingdom!_ Milano prayed. As if in some nightmare she saw the monster rising above the tops of the trees, and she screamed.

—


	3. Investigation

Black monstrous blood soaked the hems of Princess Alita's dress, but Falis was unscathed. Milano bent, hands shaking, over Young Orlan and Jon Corsson. They were knocked unconscious but left alive by this monster—by this dead monster. _Dead by the Princess' hands._ And the young soldiers looked up at Alita in awe. Milano laid down her improvised bandages on Orlan's bloodied upper arm. She tried to keep herself steady, and saw the paleness in her skin as she continued to shake.

"This was..." Milano began. "A quieter approach. Stealth. It slashed at you but left them, Princess. And me."

_I failed. I could do nothing and Akamashi escapes again._

There were grass stains on the hem of her dress and she knew that she had done nothing but fall back. She had not screamed, her mouth open in a frozen rictus but no sound from her squeezed throat. The smell of blood was like that time at the castle.

Falis' friends had rushed to her, but the Frankenstein was already destroyed. (Milano was sure they were called that, in the legends. She and Alita were both trained to recite the history for hours.) A patchwork thing, seven feet tall, scrawny and inhumanly thin and sewn together at wrists and ankles and trying to regrow its silvery flesh for minutes and agonising minutes after the Princess-of-the-Cranes had pierced it many times.

"We should...allow few people to know of this. Though my grandfather Jodo will give the best advice." Consequencs and conditions rushed through Milano's mind. She lifted her head and gave the most reasoned suggestions that she could think of. "They all think it is amazing that the Princess is a strong warrior. But the people will think it unstable that there have been so many attacks. Since the target is the Princess, the citizens will not be in danger." _A coup requires supporters. They have already killed everyone._ "We must be in a position to concentrate all our resources upon the enemy—though the Princess defeated the enemy today."

"Damn right, ginger. So I'll send Pete and Dominikov to patrol the town instead of letting them sit around being lazy-asses."

That impulse was wonderful in her, Milano thought: the Princess of Forland wanted to protect the people, and had the power to achieve it. But Milano also believed that she herself knew what was best. "No," Milano said, "the castle guard will search the capital. Then, when they signal, you and Pete and Dominikov will come and fight."

"That's not protecting the kingdom. That's protecting someone who doesn't need it." Falis pouted.

"I leave you the most difficult part," Milano protested, "you will learn how to behave at table with my grandfather. And when I go into town I hope to return with a target for your sword, Princess."

"Aww, crap," Falis sighed, looking far more frightened than she had done against the Frankenstein. "Not the old gnome..."

—

Milano walked through Green-Artifice Street, her soft grey hood pulled across her hair to protect her from the damp afternoon and the purple clouds gathered above—and to cover her face from too obvious inspection. A stranger might have guessed her an upper servant in a mistress' cast-off clothing, or a girl of respectable family fallen to some need. Her dress was sober grey and maroon, smooth and neat though old. Doctor Akamashi had lived here in more respectable days, and though he would not have deliberately left anything here to incriminate himself, there was more than one method of gathering information.

_Knowledge of intrigue is more precious than diamonds, tiny Milano_ , Grandfather would say, sagely tapping the right side of his nose.

There had been a fire. The walls were blackened and still damp with the neighbours' efforts to quench it. Since then, no one had seen anything of Akamashi. Parts of the roof had fallen in, with dark girders bent and twisted like daisy stems into what had been the kitchen. What was left of the doors swung back and forth in the wind as if they had no more substance than bedsheets drying on a line. Milano peeked inside and saw paper ash blown back and forth into empty corners, cupboards buckled with heat and bare. She slipped through the deserted house like a cloaked ghost.

Milano stopped a moment to look at the flooring pattern and its old marks: heavy equipment had been stored in Akamashi's cellars. She stepped over shards of green glass. The deserted house felt like walking over a grave. _The man who owned it created far too many graves._ She needed to visit Saul, Rodorim, Lydian, Trinpano... Where they lay in one grave for all of them; where Milano needed to visit Ceto's old mother and give her dried mutton and jars of apricot preserves, for she was a widow and she had always been a family friend; where— So many things to do and left undone.

There were a few scraps of torn paper burnt nearly to ashes and blown about the room. And then Milano reached into the very back of a burned chest-of-drawers, whose contents seemed to have been removed or tumbled over the floor before the fire. By a stroke of luck preserved papers lay wedged into the crack. She hurriedly smoothed them out. The writing was as if Akamashi dipped two spiders into his inkpot and let them scatter across his papers; the pages were creased and crumpled as if hastily thrust away, and already beginning to yellow and flake away like the cheap, thin sheets they were.

_...tried the third experimental protocol once more with improvements but yet again a failure. I have reached a wall and it is only foolish ruler's whim that stops my success..._

_...I dream of the figures within my grasp. The mathematics, the cells, the shapes. I am a man without family and yet I could_ make _a family. Frogs and bats and clockwork toys are small things. Wonders and marvels so near and yet so far..._

_...Success! I have friends who are worth more than an overstubborn King at last! Friends I shall not describe even in notes. An enlightened power must develop science! Cecilia..._

_...I will write and I will design. Prove that I am truly a man of science. She visits today. She shows me the way. Noble woman! Promising a more noble master! Let not tyrannous boundaries prevent..._

There the last paper stopped, full of diagrams Milano barely understood. She thought that she saw disjointed humanoid body parts like a garden of severed limbs—and she would not think about that comparison. There was no more.

_Cecilia._

"I have a f-friend," she explained, deliberately shy and hesitant, to the baker down the street, "her name is Cecilia, and s-she...well, she owes money I must pay. She was sometimes here...she k-knew Akamashi, though she is just a woman and not a traitor to our King and Princess..."

Milano saw that claiming the woman as a friend severely downgraded his estimate of her own respectability. There was no lady called by the exotic name Cecilia in court circles; Akamashi was unmarried and lived as a bachelor; therefore a female visitor would have to be seen as disreputable, and in the interests of her own treachery this lady would keep herself explained only by mean rumour.

"It was a scandal," the baker said with freezing decent-minded scorn, "he was a traitor to the country and he had the cloaked woman calling on him at strange hours—in day and night. All decent people felt it a scandal before we knew of the other. Now this is a decent home also, girl, and without any business here you'd best be out."

_A poor strategy._ Milano tried to salvage herself—

"Pardon me, sir! It's fine sewing my mam and I take in at Lilac-square—ask any if they've heard of us, and they'll tell we're virtuous folk! Cecilia took us in with pretty words—as if she were the fiancée of a rich scientist—and now she is gone. But do not assume us..." Genuine shame and outrage made Milano's cheeks hectic, and she thought the baker might believe her.

"Soon my wife will be in with my dinner, girl, and you and your carryings-on with traitors had best be gone," he said. "It's half-sure I am I'll be doing duty to the Princess to tell the guards."

"Do so, I beg you—do your duty to Princess Alita. She is Forland's hope and saviour. But tell me if Cecilia ever visited your shop...and if there was word of where she lived..."

The baker gave her nothing. The cloaked woman was barely even known by sight to any of the people around. Street sweepers, the water-closet man, the chestnut-vendor, the market-gardener's daughter: the cloaked woman bought nothing and asked of no one in all her visits. A lamplighter thought she had light-coloured hair and fair skin below the cloak, but he couldn't tell certainly. Milano sighed, and felt for the precious scraps of paper in her pockets. Grandfather would read these.

The two human-shaped things who were metal and sadistic bloodthirst on the inside: Akamashi's _creation_ , obscenities. She remembered too much, and pressed a hand against her forehead in pain.

_The doctor says, this is not a rebellion. This is a coup d'etat._

_A cloaked woman. Cecilia. She never even let anyone see her face._

_Are you so sure that you do not know, Milano?_

—


	4. Accusation

"Lady Hilliardo," Milano presented breathlessly, Grandfather beside her. The Princess of Forland listened with her hand on her sword. "Lady Hilliardo is Princess Alita's second cousin once removed on her mother's side. She owns iron and copper mines and politically agitates to avoid having to treat her workers fairly. Akamashi met with a cloaked woman. If Akamashi's rebellion was a coup d'etat as he asserted, then Lady Hilliardo is one of the primary candidates to claim the throne. She could have prompted Akamashi under an alias.

"Of course, she may have servants and associates who are innocent of the crime..."

Lady May Ferris Cyprian Koeshoena Hilliardo. She was not old, born only fifteen years before Alita: daughter of her mother's cousin. Under strict law her bloodline was too distant to inherit the Forland throne, but without Alita and with Kaito away she might be the most acceptable candidate. She had inherited her estates at the age of twenty-five and preferred to manage them herself. She'd never married and was supposed to be close to her chief lady-in-waiting. A tall, fair woman with hair almost the same colour as Alita's, ice-blue eyes, and a very distinctive aquiline nose.

And she had become a much greater power in court since the deaths of everyone else.

The deductions were sound—sound enough. They should have known that only one with a claim to the throne would have a reason to murder Alita's father and demand to do the same to her. Steel and copper were used in science: Akamashi making more creations would certainly benefit Lady Hilliardo. Grandfather opened his mouth beside Milano. He had agreed with her deductions enough to allow her to present them. But Falis' great energy pre-empted him.

"What are we waiting for, then? Pete, Dominikov, get the bike! We're taking the battle straight to the enemy!"

"Princess, I do not necesssarily advise—" Grandfather began. The bounty hunter's mouth was a wide, knifelike slash in the Princess' face.

"Coming, ol' gnome?"

The ride on Dominikov's device was exhilarating. It reminded Milano of bouncing in hay-carts during harvest time, down green hills with straw in her hair—only far faster. She clung to Pete's wide back while flames spewed out of the back of the vehicle. Lady Hilliardo's estate was in nearby countryside and the orange-coloured walls of her mansion soon loomed before them.

"Huh. Place looks like someone puked up oranges," Falis said.

_Funny_ , Milano thought: Lady Hilliardo's grandfather had wished an estate built with marble the colour of sunset, and when it was finally completed on his deathbed, that simile was exactly how he had desribed it...

The stables were visible to them from here. Milano saw a carriage with Lord Iexec's emblem on the side, next to a high barouche and a closed coach. There were many people here. A servant guarded the gates—

"You recognise me? I'm the Princess of Forland!" That instantly brought them through. Milano's mind raced. Lady Hilliardo had certainly gathered many guests around her today and the stables spoke of that. There was no choice: Lady Hilliardo sought power and the Princess must stand against such plots.

"Pete, Milano, stick with me for the grand entrance. Dominikov, you search," Falis ordered. "Don't let anyone leave!"

Lady Hilliardo's servants did not even try to stop them. Falis and Pete all but ripped the front door from its hinges. They crashed into Lady Hilliardo's drawing room like a pair of baby elephants, with Milano trailing in their wake like a mouse.

The grey-haired and impassive Lord Iexec, having some jade dew tea in a fine china cup—in fact in fine fragments of a china cup that lay in his cracked saucer, dropped at the Princess' forceful entry. Lady Hilliardo seated in pride of place, her hair dusted white with powder to match her gown, pale jewels glinting at her neck and wrists, and her long sharp aquiline nose seeming longer and sharper than ever. The Lady's maid standing tall behind her. Lord Francis and Lady Josephine of Cluaive, touching each other's hands under the tablecloth. The Baronet D'arta and his son Enrico giving an identical glowering look. A large number of the living faces of the court.

"Came to invite myself to this party of traitors," Falis said. She held her drawn sword, kicked over a chair, and set her foot on it. Lady Hilliardo's maid took a step toward her as if to start a fight, but her mistress laid a hand on her arm. "Move and I scrag you. We're shutting down your monsters for good."

"Traitors, Princess? This is unnecessary violence toward your loyal subjects." Lady Hilliardo returned the mercenary's stare force for force. "This is nothing like you, Princess Alita. You were a sweet child. Your father took pride in your maidenly naivete."

"Akamashi's coup d'etat was for you. You weren't there that night. Admit it!" Princess Alita barked.

"This is an outrageous accusation." Lord Iexec got to his feet, speaking ponderously: he was known for his grasp of law and custom. "The King did not summon us that night and if he had we should have died pointlessly.

"And consider, Princess. Without we nobles you should have nothing to govern."

"That is not true! Princess Alita has fought for all citizens of Forland." Milano cried out her words. Hostile eyes were fixed on her from every direction. She felt as if she were underwater, bubbles flying up from her head as she dove into dark waters with ever-shifting mud below her. "She defeated Akamashi. She saved soldiers."

"The word of a servant means nothing," said Lord Iexec.

Lady Hilliardo had not moved an inch from the point of Falis' sword. _Confident enough_ , Milano thought, _that either she knows she has won or she is..._

"Detail your accusation. You shall not execute me without proof."

"You're next after the Princess and her brother. Gotta be you," Falis said. "Sometimes it's the most obvious person all along. Where's Akamashi?"

The Lady shifted her fingers along the silken curve of her dress. "I dare you to force me to speak."

And there was silence. Falis' crimson glare and Lady Hilliardo's ice, and the protective maid behind the noblewoman—they were frozen in a tableau, and Milano did not think it was the Princess who proved victorious.

Pete's thick purple hands fell to his sides. "Master does not torture."

"You stay here!" Falis gestured with her sword. "No, trust you bigwigs to have secret passages and crap like that. You all go out to the stables. Pete guards you. Just a little search, for your secret laboratories and treachery."

It humiliated the nobles to be crammed into a corner of Lady Hilliardo's stables with horses neighing by them. Lady Hilliardo only had one personal guard, besides her maid. _Too few for one who dreams of taking the throne._

"Ginger! You're the one who knows best how to do the searching."

For exhausting hours Milano combed the orange-coloured monstrosity with Dominikov. A secret passage or two—no secret laboratories. Milano pried through the papers in an ormolu bureau.

_At least we know that Lady Hilliardo cheats on her taxes, embezzles mining profits, and makes her miners work too long hours!_ Milano thought. _Surely it would benefit the Princess to help the workers..._

"Okay, there's nothing," Falis said grudgingly. "No labs. But if ever we hear you're cooperating with traitors..."

Lady Hilliardo swept her an elaborate curtsey with her pale skirts scraping straw and dirt from the ground, even as the other nobles exited rapidly out of the stables for their carriages.

"You have done all of us a great honour, Princess Alita. You prove our innocence...and you show us all your nature."

—


	5. Replication

"I did not raise a granddaughter to be a fool!" Grandfather's stick struck sparks off the ground. "Not sense enough to avoid leaving nobles in a stable for four hours!

"I thought there reason for your theory myself," he said in a softer voice. "Yet I see we were blindly wrong. We were the only two with a reason to know better. Now go to prepare the Princess for her coronation! Let us hope at least some show up to support her."

Alita's room; Alita's blue lamp on her bedside table; Alita's window with the rambling roses just outside. It was still summer in Forland, and in the mornings there were always rainbows through the crystal edgings of the glass. Milano and Alita used to wake early to gaze at them and always smile at the sight. Milano reached for Alita's silver-backed hairbrush in the usual place.

"Falis? What did you do with your brush?"

"What brush? Look, can we leave off the corset?" Falis was pacing with her katana jutting out from her belt again. Milano confiscated Miss Shoo-Roo from the mantelpiece and placed Princess Alita's porcelain owl safely in her apron.

_Alita would have..._

_...known what to do._

"First, I'll make you a better sheath for your weapons before you destroy any more of Alita's possessions," Milano said. Probably Falis had thrown the hairbrush somewhere impossible to reach out of sheer frustration.

Falis snorted but gave way; it must be that particular tone of voice. Milano drew out her needlebook and a set of spare corset laces to twist together. Sometimes she felt like flinging hairbrushes herself.

"That's better. Now, a Princess at her coronation must be properly dressed. Grip onto the bedpost while I fit your corset. You can bite the pillow if you need to."

"Fucking—ginger—quit—strangling—me!"

Before it was over, the Princess had pinned her to the ground at least twice.

"Last, the cloak-pin. Turn around and I'll make sure it's straight. Perfect. And you know the words you must say." Milano turned Falis to the full-length mirror. "You look..."

Falis had Alita's hair, but Alita would have allowed Milano to create a much more complicated style for her coronation. Her bare head and fall of smooth primrose-yellow hair awaited the crown. The rich, old-fashioned cloak fell above Alita's dress, a deep red trimmed with white fur: colouring vivid enough for Falis, the gold and ruby pin too heavy and elaborate to be Alita's taste. The unfamiliarity of it made Milano take a step backward. The glint of Falis' weapons below the cloak added to the image. This Princess was a warrior queen from ancient times, wearing fur from beasts that in the old days she would have slain herself. This Princess wore strange garb and was a stranger within. This Princess had sworn a pact to save them all. For a price...

"Glorious," Milano said.

"If the coronation goes sour I swear I'm skipping town to pawn this dinnerplate," Falis said, tugging at her cloak-pin, then letting Milano fix it up again. She met Milano's eyes. "I made a promise. I'll keep it."

—

A maid should not ride with the Princess. But as no one argued with Pete and Dominikov as her honour guard, they did not complain about Milano. Young Orlan and Jon Corsson followed behind them, recovered enough from the attack to walk: they cheered the Princess who had saved their lives.

"Wave and smile..." Milano whispered. "Forland is small. The people are close to their ruler."

Commoners came out for the Princess. Milano saw few nobles. _It does not matter. The Archbishop will crown her._ A small girl with a dog waved at the Princess and smiled when Falis noticed them.

 _She has already learnt to care for Forland._ For a moment, Milano touched the porcelain owl's cool smooth surface in her pocket.

"Been thinking, ginger," Falis whispered as the carriage rolled along. "Milano. Talking things over with Dominikov. I just have to be crowned. When Prince Kaito comes home, everyone's going to be happy and all the crops will bloom and there'll be a hundred years of spring and all that stuff, right? Then I can swap bodies with you."

"I have," Milano whispered back, "no idea how many times you were being hit on the head at the time you thought of that, or exactly what illegal alcoholic beverages you have smuggled into the castle and drunk against orders—by the way, Mother Waycombe keeps the personal still—but..."

She remembered to smile and wave.

"You do this Princess crap," Falis continued seraphically. "You'd be good at it and you'd probably like it. Give me your body, you take Alita's, and I go off and be a mercenary again."

"I've..." Milano had so many things to keep down. _Alita's face looking out of the mirror at me. Crowns and powers and gifts._ "I have made every mistake it is possible to make so far! I have been wrong all the time! I have caused disasters, Princess Alita!"

"So what? Like I've done better. Admitting it," Falis said, "is a good start." She grinned at a little boy throwing phlox flowers at them. "Once I've done the princessing crap, Dominikov helps me find a way to swap again. We leave. You get to pay for my services to Forland with your body."

Milano tried to fix her with the iciest of stares—sometimes they even worked. Strangely, that strawberry blush began to appear on Alita's cheeks again.

"...Um, I didn't mean it that way. Sorry. Forget I ever said anything." Falis shook her head, turned away, and returned to her duties.

The crowds were packed around the church: Forland's Concordance Basilica of Our Lady of the Rainbows. They seemed so eager to get into the interior that they barely let the carriage pass. Milano heard hushed silence fall as Pete lifted the Princess down to walk the rest of the way. They parted for Alita in a silent, almost reverent wave. Behind her, Milano took Dominikov's arm while he tipped his head to her. The Princess of Forland walked into her coronation, head held high and sword sheathed below her cloak...

"In God's name, I crown the heir to the Andronea Dynasty of Forland, candidate for the Imperium of Mito Gardenlair, Queen Alita Casteria Arago Forland!"

Milano had barely heard the Archbishop's words. The noise of the crowd was too deafening. Up on the dais, Princess Alita—Queen Alita, now—rose, bearing her crown on her plaited coronet of hair, the stained-glass windows behind her shining sunlit radiance upon her. Alita accepted her people's cheers with quiet, serene humility, her limpid eyes gazing at those who loved her.

And the other Alita gaped at her from the church entrance.

The crowned Alita Forland looked at Alita Forland. Alita Forland's mouth hung open as she stared at the woman who was her. Alita Forland on the dais paled with shock. The crowd quieted whilst they looked from one to the other. Instinctively, and because there was absolutely nothing else that she could do, Milano reached up to close Alita's jaw.

—


	6. Duplication

It was Alita. It was Alita's mannerisms. Alita's speech, Alita's face, Alita's expressions. She was pale, but composed and ladylike as she spoke of the other Alita Forland.

"Good people," Alita pleaded. "She is an impostor. I was saved from Erure forest. A witch captured me and took my face. Until yesterday I was a prisoner and I owe my salvation to my rescuers."

It was all too plausible. Erure forest had many monsters and dangers in it. Goblins, trolls, Chitabagu the tree demon, Pete, Dominikov: Milano knew that magic had many powers.

"Please take the impostor captive. Do not harm them if you can," Alita said. "Jodo Entolasia, please believe me and join me! You were another grandfather to me and I am sorry that you were deceived.

"And Milano Entolasia...you could have died to save me. Come back from the witch and her servants."

Alita looked at the faces around her. "I know all that Alita Forland should know. Lady Hilliardo. Your mother's name was Cyprian Castile Azure Grenate before her marriage, and she was the second cousin of my lady mother, by their great-grandmother Emiko Mellisina Castile Bakterion Mito. Countess Fiennec, you and I played lawn-tennis with the Queen of Hatohiri and Marquise Azami and earned four points in our last game. Lord Iexec, your arms are argent, a chevron azure, in chief a mace en soleil encircled by a garter, between four goats rampant. Lady Josephine and Lord Francis of Cluaive, your youngest daughter was christened with my name."

"I know...to use the fork on the outside first!" Falis snapped. "The words to the coronation—I promise to Forland, to protect its people..." She gave a frantic glance to Milano. "I know lots of things!"

Alita's words had shaken Milano. Once she'd memorised the noble lineages and arms along with the Princess. She'd been there at that tennis game—with most of the court... She'd been with Alita when Alita had chosen a rattle and a soft lace robe and used her own hands to make a tiny doll as gifts for the newborn child.

"Tell me, Alita Forland." Lord Iexec rose to his feet, marked out a bow, and gestured to the Princess by the door. "What is my customary seating at banquets with no rank higher than a Marquess—and Your Highness—present? Which duchy was granted to my great-grandfather in the five hundred and eighty-fourth year of the Shandy Era? What was the name of your second tutor in the laws and customs of Forland?"

"Um—the tutor that the King wanted? Er. The Iexec duchy? I know the banquet one! It's the Majesty at the head of the table and women on the left, men on the right, right? Or else it's women on the right, men on the left, barons above knights, usually..."

Milano should have prompted her. She could feel that the fingers of her left hand were warm. Falis' right hand was clasped in Milano's hand, their fingers intertwined and stiff.

"The...The gentleman of highest rank accompanies the hostess to dinner, unless there are fewer gentlemen than ladies present, in which case the gentleman of highest rank accompanies the lady of highest rank other than the hostess. If the hostess is royal, then the Marquess is to be seated at her left hand," Queen Alita spoke from the dais. "The duchy of Caryol-Carian, the lands that export goat cheese, blue dye from indigo plants, and legal scholarship. Beryin Fosse, recommended to my father by certain learned nobles."

"Exactly what I was just about to say," Falis said.

Milano studied Queen Alita again. The body language was all Alita's. The knowledge was close enough. The story was dizzingly plausible. The only knowledge of Alita's death came from Falis. The only evidence was a buried body of a small dark woman never known to anyone of Forland.

And yet there was something too keen and smug about Alita Forland's swift answers that was not exactly the Alita Milano knew...

_I want to believe that the real Alita is alive, because she was my dearest friend._

_But I cannot believe that it would be so_ easy _._

 _And it is_ impossible _that Falis is an evil witch, in or out of Erure forest._

Perhaps much the same thoughts echoed in Grandfather's head beside her.

"Hell," Falis said aloud, "I wish to all the gods you were the real Alita Forland, lady. Because a crown's a heavy weight. Because it's not easy protecting a kingdom. Because I'd rather someone else stepped in and did the work. But, because you're a liar...I won't let you betray Alita's kingdom."

"I am Queen Alita's nearest relative. I know the true Alita Forland when I see her." The long-nosed Lady Hilliardo flung her support behind the Alita on the dais. Her eyes glinted in triumph over those who had imprisoned her in her own stables. Other nobles joined with her.

Orlan took his turn to step forward, he and Jon Corsson together. "I'm a guard for Forland, and we serve the Princess who saved our lives."

"Stand down."

The Queen beckoned a man from the audience to the stage. "I would like you all to meet my rescuer from Erure forest. A man who is kind and good and knowledgeable. You must all care for him if you care for me. I also have two new guardians, created from the science that works such benefits in our kingdom. Please be introduced to Doctor Akamashi and his daughters, Ana and Yuna."

There was blood on Milano's face and she could not breathe. Lydian was screaming seven feet away from her. He would always be screaming. Blood and metal would always fill her throat and the woman with robot hands would cut her open like she had Ceto, red and white wings torn out of his back.

She ground Alita's knuckes between her fingers and saw the deaths of her friends before her. The robot women leapt from the dais and began to massacre everyone there in the way they'd done before.

Milano screamed. "They will kill everyone. Akamashi will kill everyone again. Run while you still can."

Yet no sound came from her mouth. Akamashi was not killing everyone here, not yet. He was bending down to Queen Alita and whispering in her ear. The crowned woman spoke again.

"Guards loyal to Forland. Please show your loyalty and take the traitors into custody."

And some—not all, but enough—of the guards who yet lived, faces Milano had known since she and many of them were small, hemmed them in.

"We can't fight," Milano asked. In all this she had not released Falis'—Princess Alita's—hand. "We cannot fight Forland itself."

Aldrias was looking at she and Jodo, uncertain, an old scar running past his freckles from where Milano's brother Taranto once accidentally hit him in a practice duel, his guard's armour slightly rumpled as always. There was Cheruin beside him, his helm shining bright for the coronation, always ready with a flower or a compliment for any girl who walked past. Jontom, an older veteran her father's age, lucky to be ill in the cellars the day of the coup d'etat. They had chosen the other Alita.

Orlan and Jon Corsson would fight for the Princess, but they were ill. Pete and Dominikov could easily fight, but not without hurting people. And Princess Alita never would nor could raise a sword against men who had sworn to give their lives for her. And now on every side there were guards of Forland, believing in an evil witch in Alita's skin by Milano's side. Milano held to Falis' fingers.

"We surrender," Pete said.

—

Forland had very little prison space. There was a single cell in the soldiers' barracks where they kept Lieutenant Tamelin's potatoes and men who needed time to calm down. There was an open-air prison not far from the city, and a small institution for the mentally touched that adjoined to the principal priory and hospital. Forland Castle had underground rooms intended for bloodier times, but most of these were now used for onions, wine, apples, court scientists' laboratories, and a recent extension to the dairy.

Nonetheless, Queen Alita had been able to locate a dank pit near the onion cellars which was opened by a small manhole. They'd had to order carpenters in to make it large enough to lower Pete. At the bottom of sheer, slippery rock walls, damp mud ran across the prisoners' feet and it sounded as if plenty of small creatures called this place home.

"Milano! Tell your granddad not to worry, we'll break the spell the witch has on you to make you believe her!" Aldrias called down. Then the hole was covered over and complete darkness fell on them.

Grandfather gave a snort. Milano helped him lean on her as much as he could, or would. "We are entirely irrelevant to them. The only reason they did not kill us was that Alita Forland—and, I hope, most of those who know our family—would never wish to do so."

"And if they really believed Falis was a witch, they would kill her immediately," Milano said. "Try to kill her, that is. She is the real Princess of Forland." She felt Grandfather's hand on her arm in the dark. She had come too close to what she should never tell, even though she barely knew it herself.

"You never doubted me, not for a moment. Right, ginger?" Falis asked. Perhaps she meant it lightly.

"We will have to escape. They will want everyone to die, except perhaps you. And whoever sided with them, they will kill them the same." There was a weird echo in here. All the voices were too loud, and the damp mud was squashed under Milano's feet like corpses.

"Not you, little girl." Pete's voice was slow and compassionate. His purple skin in the dark was cold and textured like a varnished hardwood, ironbark. She touched his massive arm. "Master and we will protect you."

"Granddaughter, what is the nature of the other Alita?" Grandfather asked her.

 _Thoughts belong in order._ Milano leant against the rock of their prison and took a deep breath of the fouled air.

"Even without the evidence of the character of the King, your knowledge would stretch to the existence of other relatives of Alita, Grandfather. Not to mention the exact likeness. Therefore...she is as real as the monsters who have attacked. Akamashi wrote of creating a family. The other Alita is his work," Milano surmised. Probably she was as wrong as she had been before.

"And what else have we learnt, Milano Entolasia?" Jodo asked of her.

 _I will write and I will design_ , Akamashi wrote. _She visits today. She shows me the way._ Surely Milano had been blind.

"Cecilia granted Akamashi access to science. She therefore has more access to science than he. She is more important to them. She is...a witch. Whoever she is. She is part of the coup..."

 _No!_ That _is impossible! For my brothers' sake if nothing else! Do not think it, Milano!_

"...There are many strange powers in far-flung parts of the earth," Milano said weakly. "How are we to escape, Grandfather?"

"The north limestone rock fourth to the left is loose. Your other left, thank you."

—

They tumbled out of the secret passage into a storeroom filled with dried hops. There were great advantages to one's grandfather knowing everything about Forland castle. _A wise ruler never builds a prison that he cannot escape, tiny Milano_ , Grandfather would say. _This is why I advise the King on architecture._

Someone entered the storeroom, and they froze in place behind a barrel of ale. Jodo placed a finger to his lips to silence them and snuck out himself.

"Shush." The plump woman gave a start before calming herself and shutting the door behind her. "Posie, it's only me ... a poor man begging for your aid and succor," Grandfather said.

Mother Waycombe nodded. "They've changed the guard schedules," she whispered. "But Posandria Waycombe's not my name if I don't help you! Is that the true Princess behind you? Lord-love-a-duck, if it ain't enough to confuse an old body out of her wits. Wait and inside an hour I'll have those guards where you nor they won't be hurt."

"We knew that we could count on your service, Posie," Grandfather said staidly.

"Take care of yourself, fleeing off to the wilderness in these times. Come back and save the country. Make sure that granddaughter of yours looks after your lumbago and doesn't let you sleep on anything damp ... and, by the way, good luck."

She seized Jodo's pointed ears, and enthusiastically bent down to the height of her waist to kiss the top of his head. Milano glanced up at the ceiling.

_Honestly, Grandfather!_

Jontom and Sergeant Venellung were snoozing off one of Mother Waycombe's number-eight-extra-strongs when the group snuck past. Grandfather panted, trying to keep pace with Dominikov. Alita was a beacon of energy and activity, leaping forward to scout their way and silently beckon them through. Milano pointed to the armoury, and like lightning Alita dashed in there and returned with Princess-of-the-Cranes held openly and dangerously.

They ran, and almost all the forces of Milano's own homeland would be arrayed against them as traitors.

To say nothing of witchcraft.

They did not hear the sorceress before she was upon them.

—


	7. Abstention

It smelt of roast meat. Someone was cooking lamb. Milano screamed. Alita's dress was blackened on her left side—Pete was shielding her with his body—Grandfather fell. She ran to him.

"Get out of the way, foolish grandchild!" he shouted. Milano set her fingers around Jodo's shoulder and dragged him behind a cupboard. They would never be safe. Bright white fire fell about them like a flashing, falling star. Smoke filled the air. A slim silhouette came lazily from the other side.

"But this is splendid! You come into our hands so soon." She laughed, and she was dazzingly beautiful and perfect in feature. She wore white furs over an elaborate necklace of jewelled armour. Smooth draperies of clothing followed the lines of her lovely skin. She held a device in her right hand that shone like the tail of a comet. She had exquisitely pale hair that fell on her shoulders. She had a delicately proportioned, upturned nose.

And despite her beauty she was entirely, and frighteningly, inhuman. The tapered lines of her face were flawless, but they were also cruel as the grave. Milano could not look away from her pale terrible face.

"Cecilia," Jodo announced softly. The woman raised her fair hand once more.

 _Alita, save us again!_ Milano begged. She fell behind a weak wooden shelter. The Princess leapt on the enemy. Something ferocious was in Falis' expression that Milano had never seen before. Milano hoped that it meant victory, as Falis had triumphed in all other battles.

_And there is nothing I can do anyway. But I can see that Grandfather is safe._

Together, they limped away from where the battle raged, hoping to slip into a safe obscure corridor.

"Hey, it's that fake princess from before!"

The invaders. The women with the robot hands. The creatures. Fear chattered in Milano's back and neck as if chilly hands lay on her spine. A spine like white wings splayed away from her body, like Ceto— Milano stood upright and knew what she must do for the sake of the kingdom—

"Doctor, can we smash them?"

"Akamashi," Milano said. She had no understanding of how she could speak. "We are your dearest friends now."

He was finely dressed in a dignified bottle-green frock-coat and a monocle, his enameled scientist's insignia hanging on his breast like a medal. As if there were a grand party celebrating the usurpers; as though he were an honoured and honourable man.

"You must know that they want you dead," Milano said. She stared into his face. The only way she kept her composure was by ruthless logic.

_Diplomacy is a weak woman's weapon but it may be stronger than steel in humiliating and obliterating your enemies._

"Cecilia is the one who knows most of science," she said. "She gave you what you wanted. They will not need you...and they will murder you. You cannot possibly believe them. Join us. We offer help."

 _I will see you hanging from a gallows one day when this is done, Akamashi,_ she promised within herself, thoughts as harsh as her straight spine, _and I will watch your face turn purple, and I will see the lingering death of a traitor. This I promise you in the name of the Entolasia family loyal to Forland._

She knew she was utterly right.

Behind her, she heard Pete scream.

The doctor bent down and whispered in the robot's ear.

"Doctor wants a reward," the loud robot woman said. "Says the ol' gnome knows about Teoria. He wants the key."

 _No! He could not possibly—_ Grandfather froze in fear and shock beside her and Milano's mind frantically worked through possibilities that she barely knew about, only that it was doom and terror upon Forland and all of them.

There was a stroke of brilliant lightning, radiating smoke as it split over Dominikov's scythe. Princess Alita had not yet won.

And then Milano saw the figure behind the traitor Akamashi. The stranger paced noiselessly through the smoke, the man in armour who carried a vast black sword. A malevolent red light the size of a pin beamed from his black helm, and his face was concealed. Milano could only point at him in warning while her throat went dry.

With a smooth, strong grace, the black figure raised his sword. Every motion of his was something Milano had seen a thousand times before.

_For my brothers Fiorenze and Taranto, no!_

She tried to shriek a warning.

"It's just a stupid trick, fake-princess!" the purple-haired one shouted, but the other robot woman was not so disciplined and looked. Akamashi fell to the ground and skidded to the opposite wall, unharmed. The light-haired robot stood over where he'd been, and cried out:

" _Not our Doctor!_ "

The black sword sliced through the robot women as swiftly as Alita had dealt with them. But they gathered around Akamashi and strove to protect him. They leaked oil in place of blood and they refused to fall back. Half of a head rolled to Milano's feet, the mouth open in a scream. She kicked it away from herself in sheer fright, and the sword split it again and again. The other robot woman's back was against a wall—the sword split the plaster open as well as the robot. She looked almost like a teenage girl as she was killed. Then light flooded in from the hall behind. There was a party, a celebration, many nobles in brightly coloured dresses like a flock of sunbirds. They scattered at the noises of the fight, but there was one who stayed.

The Queen in delicate blue robes and the crown of Forland woven into her hair rushed toward the battle.

"Ana! Yuna! Father!" she cried, and screamed when she saw the remains of the robot women. She flung herself across Akamashi and faced the warrior. "I thought that you were on our side! Highn— We are on your side! Don't hurt my father! Please, please..." She covered her face in fear and sobbed, spoiling her elaborate hair design.

There was only an oil spill and a selection of scrap parts now lying by the doctor, and the warrior in black armour raised his sword a last time.

 _Alita_ , Milano thought, and could feel the smooth weight of Miss Shoo-Roo in her apron pocket. _The real Alita was as brave as Falis...and Alita was braver than her brother._ Her hand closed its fingers around the porcelain owl.

It smashed into the back of Kaito's helm. He turned his head. The owl fell to the ground in a thousand fragments.

"How _dare_ you!" Milano shouted. She'd regained her voice. The man in black armour stared at her. "Don't look at me like a silly goat, you heard me the first time! Kaito! I'd know your fighting style a mile away, for you taught it to my brothers! It doesn't matter what stupid armour you wear, Kaito! Traitor to your name!

"My brother Fiorenze, my brother Taranto, they gave their lives for you. Alita... Be shamed by your blood! Toad-prince, worm-prince, worthless betrayer!"

But Prince Kaito's voice was slow and reflective. "You're a red-haired Entolasia...one of Jodo's promiscuous grandchildren. I don't remember your name. One of my sister's handmaids. Scolding like a fishwife."

He turned back to the sight of the sorceress in her battle. Milano watched, horrified, when Falis was thrown to lie by Akamashi...and did not get up. Pete and Dominikov were flung beside her. The witch lowered her device. She advanced to the warrior's side.

Milano's fingernails were clenched into her palms. She looked away from Falis' bleeding face.

"Even a fishwife is higher than you, Kaito! A baker, a street-sweeper, a housekeeper, these would never countenance treachery to Forland. Even a maid. Even a stranger to this kingdom. I'll never call you prince again! You're filth, Kaito, you're traitorous scum, you're the baseborn cross between a cockroach and a plague rat, you should go and—" Milano added many colourful expressions she'd heard from her brothers and the other soldiers, until her breath ran out.

Cecila placed a pale hand against Kaito's pauldron, moving her fingers slowly across the thin joint by his neck. "She has a shrew's tongue. Shall I cut it out?" she asked in a flute-like voice.

"No. Do not harm her." Kaito reached for his helm. The features below were the same as ever, and almost identical to Alita's. Fair hair and calm crimson eyes, a long face and entirely the same cheekbones. And yet unlike Alita it was impossible to read what lay behind those gentle eyes. "You do not understand. Your sorrow for your brothers was my sorrow."

Milano folded her arms. "You said that in your condolence letters to my mother. You meant none of it."

"Peace," Kaito said. He stepped forward, and brushed the underside of Milano's chin with the cool metal of his gauntlet. She hated the look of him. "I will cause the entire world to know a peace away from bloodshed. That is my plan."

She hauled back a fist and punched his face. No Falis she was...but there were certain results that came of a girl living with two older brothers and their many soldier friends.

Milano very much doubted if her head would have continued to be attached to her neck, if Dominikov had not reached for the remains of the robots and activated a stray canister of thick purple smoke...

She jumped down from Pete's arms into their stolen goat-cart. Dominikov gently lowered Alita's bloodied body beside her. Akamashi and the woman who called him father landed like sacks of potatoes, then Jodo on top of them. Pete fitted himself into the harness, and the quickly-closing branches of the thick Erure Forest folded around them in the dark of the evening.

Milano looked at Falis, and categorised how Alita's body had been brutalised. The right wrist was badly swollen and bruised, even as purple fingers clenched the Princess-of-the-Cranes. The left side of the dress was torn and there was a burn below it. A livid red-and-white mark was splayed across the collarbone. There was a lot of blood, but it must come from the head wound and the closed left eye. It caked her hair together with red. She was dead to the world, but her throat rose and fell with shallow breaths.

Milano's hair had fallen out of its practical braids, and she tied it together so that she would not dirty the wounds further. It gave her a moment to breathe.

_Tell yourself that it is a sheep, Milano. A sheep has fallen to some rocks and you must take care of it for now. You know what you must do in this case._

"I'll look at Master," Dominikov ordered abruptly. Gladly she shifted over. "Medics today are a bunch of butchers and quacks. Let's see if you've steady enough hands for a bandage, Miss Milano."

In that frantic rush with the cart she obeyed Dominikov without thought, cushioning Alita's body as much as she could, turning her mind away from desperate prayers and into practical paths.

_Our dear Lady of the Rainbows, let Falis be healed..._

_She has almost given her life for this kingdom._

—


	8. Conversion

"Here," Jodo said with some satisfaction, "we may find refuge...with an old friend of mine. Mister Pete, do me the favour of accompanying me."

Animal cages, old straw, horses, roasting sausages on a bonfire, smoke-imbued fabrics, spices, muddy ground. Milano saw the scene of a travelling circus. A place to hide, any port in a storm perhaps— She concentrated on Falis and doing what she could. The witch had easily defeated the undefeatable warrior and wounded her badly indeed—probably taking pains while doing so to let the Princess' body live! There was enough to despair about. Milano's hand lingered on Falis' temple.

And then she felt cold, wiry fingers close about her other wrist. Falis' burning left eye flickered open.

"Milano. Heard you," Falis muttered. "Language. What you told that Kaito guy. You sure you're fit company for princesses?"

"Yes, Master—our Miss Milano has some anatomical education," Dominikov said quickly, bending over the fallen princess.

"Listen, Dominikov. The witch. I know that witch," Falis added. She seemed to grasp at something very important to her, tightly curling her fingers around Milano's arm. "Gonna see her dead. When I get up..."

Her fingers loosened their grip once more, and she fell back into a troubling rest.

"Cecilia—the witch—betrayed us as well." Akamashi spoke in a thin, reedy voice from the back of the cart, the first time he had said anything at all since their flight. "She granted me access to Teoria. I created my children. And then they murdered them."

"Prince Kaito promised he and Lady Cecilia would help Father," Queen Alita said. She made a very rumpled, distressed Alita now, her blue gown soiled and her hair crumpled across her face. "And under all chivalric standards, royals must keep their word even if it is informal. In the year six hundred and twelve, Esteemed Judge Surito published an opinion in the court case Midor Union versus Akio and Zaby that the higher the rank the more they should keep their verbal contracts because... Oh, I don't know what I'm saying when my sisters are dead! Ana, Yuna—"

"No more out of you. You've done enough damage," Milano snapped. Somehow her tone worked against the woman, she who was not Alita and could never be. Dominikov ran a slim sharp inhuman finger along the edge of his scythe.

 _Please tell me it's over_ , she thought. The realities were beginning to sink in.

 _I said...I told Pr—Alita's brother—exactly what he could do with himself and punched him...which is lese-majeste and possibly even treason. I—_ She'd have liked to swoon or vomit. Maybe the latter.

 _Every hand is turned against us, perhaps every guard in Forland sent on our pursuit._ She trusted Grandfather, but this circus could never be a permanent shelter.

( _Dead Trinpano, Ceto, Saul, Lydian, my brothers—where are you? I failed you and so did others!_ )

_Oh, Our Lady of the Rainbows, where's a convenient set of bushes when you need one!_

Milano, wiping the foul taste away from her mouth, tried not to stagger too obviously when she walked back. More than she had done much more for Forland this day. Her back shook in fright and she could not help feeling that she was still in the middle of it.

Grandfather and Pete were returning, walking with a richly dressed woman in outlandish costume.

She couldn't have been higher than Milano's waist, Grandfather's size or so, but she wore a gilt gold headdress with five pigeons sculpted on it that raised her height by a foot. Red and yellow scarves swathed her hair. Her scarlet gold-frogged dress mimicked a colonel's formal uniform, edged with violent violet and glittering orange piping. Gemstones the size of saucers were arranged around her neck in thick metallic chains that jingled when she walked, and peacock-feather earrings dangled from her pointed ears. Her face was deeply wrinkled and pouched like a lumpfish, but she wore crimson paint around her mouth and a layer of makeup that hid most of her features. Her small, dark, glinting eyes flashed behind a gigantic set of false eyelashes that rose and fell like bat's wings.

"Allow me to introduce," Grandfather said, "the one and only, an old and very unique friend of mine...Ringmaster Heloise-i-roi-sora, master of the Glorious Circus Eiko, and member of the Secret Fraternity of Gnomes."

"Those related to gnomes may be honourary members." Ringmaster Heloise glanced at Milano's feet, tiny like her grandfather's despite her height. Always a sure tell. The ringmaster's voice was thick and dark like two-hundred-year-old burgundy, layered as if she'd smoked tobacco and cloves for years. "This is a circus of quality. We accept only worthy acts. Jodo is a manager and Mister Pete a strongman. What are the rest of you?"

Akamashi whispered something to the false Alita. "My father's also a manager!" she said.

Dominikov stood up in a single smooth motion, twirling his scythe between his hands like a shinigami of dark and grim legend. "I'm—"

"A clown, I can easily see that," Heloise said, and gave a sharp stare at Milano. "Gnome blood, on the tall side, halfway decent posture. What do we do with you?"

"Cage sweeper. I'm also a good seamstress," she offered.

Heloise looked at Falis. "An invalid—well, if the rest of you are worth your salt, she'll be cared for. Our own herbalist will help with her care. Decently out of sight, I should imagine."

"She would be an excellent acrobat if she were well," Milano volunteered.

"And the last one? We don't take dead weight," Heloise said. The false Alita hesitated.

"I...I was meant to be something else, but I'm not that any more." She shook her head, and the golden circlet of Forland slipped between her tangled locks to her feet. Milano quietly picked it up. "If I'm not what I was made to be, then what am I? I don't know who I am any more."

The Ringmaster looked thunderously displeased. "What can you do?" she rapped out. "Any skills whatsoever?"

The false Alita looked deeply confused. Akamashi whispered something again. "Well...I have an eidetic memory and I can read ten thousand words a minute," she offered. She closed her eyes. "The-jewellery-you-are-wearing-madame-is-a-heavy-turquoise-stone-on-a-gold-kings-braid-chain-and-a-pink-opal-with-four-garnet-setting-on-large-espiga-chain-and..."

"You're hired," Heloise said, stopping her from reeling through the the bracelets and waist chains as well. "The amazing drone-them-to-sleep girl. I can work with that. Then, strongman, haul away this cart and chop it up! Clown, find the others and rehearse with them! Cage-sweeper, help my herbalist with the wounded lass, then snap to it! Managers, you may make me a cup of tea in my caravan."

—

Milano had never seen so many gnomes together in her life. Ringmaster Heloise hired so many others like her and Grandfather that the Glorious Circus Eiko might well be called a gnome circus. There was her herbalist, an old man with a beard as white as a snowy dove's feathers that curled around his ankles and very steady hands; her fortune-teller, a middle-aged woman with tightly curled golden hair and a pained expression due to poor digestion; her man of business; almost all her animal keepers; and most of her roustabouts and other workers were both muscular and tiny.

"I never thought that we should seek shelter in a place such as this," Jodo told her in a low voice, looking out over the circus tents packed away for their travel. He plucked a stray piece of straw out of his beard with disfavour. "But Heloise is an old acquaintance...and her operation is far more respectable than some."

The circus had given one night's performance in the bustling market town of Kobaiiro Hill, and fortunately they already planned to travel across the border. Fugitives might pass for needles in a haystack. And to leave Forland behind meant that a portion of the danger was passed.

Falis was as well as could be expected. Dominikov trusted the herbalist and had stated that the bounty hunter was stable.

"But this is only temporary, Grandfather. We cannot leave Forland in _his_ hands," Milano said. "And if he...has pressing reasons to seek the Princess of Forland..."

"Don't try to be subtle, granddaughter!" Jodo tapped his cane againsst the ground. "Do not speculate on what you do not know and rather consider what you do." He turned away toward Heloise' caravan. It would be safe to be very unobtrusive.

"Or on what I can learn," Milano said softly. She adjusted the basket on her arm and went on to the caravan where Falis lay. Milano had turned Alita's body enough to prevent bedsores and mixed some sootheroot tea for her, when a quiet knock came on the caravan door. She startled, but surely it was too quiet to be soldiers.

"Good afternoon, is there anything I can do to help?" Alita's double asked. The circus folk had lent her a plain, unbecoming black dress to wear; this detracted from her resemblance to the Princess. "I discovered a medical text at the bottom of the magician's caravan to read! So I do believe I could be of great use..."

"It's most important for the patient to be kept quiet," Milano said curtly. _Anyone could see why none sane would trust an exact twin of Alita's appearance!_ "But please walk outside with me a while."

"Then is her prognosis positive?" the false Alita asked. "That is good. She has more colour in her cheeks than when last I saw."

"I am deeply curious," Milano admitted. A babel of voices around them from roustabouts dismantling tents hid most of their sounds whilst they walked. "What is the story of you and Doctor Akamashi?"

"That's easy! Doctor was happy once," the false Alita said. "He was a scientist for Forland and he enjoyed research. But then he kept trying and trying, and he'd only hit a wall that trapped him. The King of Forland refused to give him acess to more science. Then that witch, Cecilia, approached him. She promised him the moon and stars. Isn't that an irregular metaphor?" She gazed off into space, fidgeting with her loose hair. "The stars are many orders of magnitude more distant than the moon...by measuring eclipses, one can tell that the moon is approximately three point seven times smaller than the earth, but the stars are much further away than the sun because they are bright pinpricks... However did the first Alita deal with this much hair? It gets _everywhere_!

"To continue, after Cecilia approached our father, she gave him research material to create Ana and Yuna, who were androids. He also began the experiments that led to me, as well as several Frankensteins. After the Princess' behaviour suddenly changed, Doctor and the witch decided I would be their strategy. I call him father because he created me.

"The word for the kind of creature I am is clone...it is a very old and rare word in science. Clones are duplicates of living beings that can be created using a flake of skin or a strand of hair from a hairbrush or similar, but they are not perfect and they do not have the same knowledge as the original. Father improved me with a cyborg brain, so that I have my eidetic memory and read very quickly. He gave a data dump to me of everything he knew and I read through all the books on Forland that he had. But I am also not a duplicate of the Princess in the important ways." She said the last part in a hushed whisper. "Do you know? Doctor will probably be asking your grandfather.

"And I am nothing any more! My purpose was to impersonate Princess Alita, but that has disappeared and Ana and Yuna were murdered. I am only a fugitive." She looked helplessly at Milano. "One of the documents I read was a list of casualties in the army with Prince Kaito...there were many of them. Two of them were your brothers. You lost two brothers, and I two sisters. We have a trait in common."

 _Your sisters killed everyone_ , Milano thought, and the fear and stench of blood still ruled her. She refused to answer.

"...Andt I am also the exact image of the Princess you work for," the clone finished. "That is another reason why..."

"I want you not to be Alita," Milano said. "The true queen lies gravely wounded because of your actions. Be anything you want but her." She could have easily spoken in much harsher tones than that.

The clone gave a small nod, downcast. "That is not helpful to me," she protested, "I still feel empty and like I am no one."

"Be helpful like this," Milano said, and reached for a mop and bucket hung near to the leopard cage. "Clean up the mess."

The circus travelled at snail's pace, but gradually neared the Forland border. Milano sat with Falis, hemming the spangled dress of one of the acrobats while she watched the Princess rest. She was glad to see a trace of pink colour in Falis' face. The caravan moved at a steady pace with a heavy serene carthorse jogging onward, and this was certainly less jostling to an invalid than a plain cart.

It was said that Forland soldiers had passed through the valley of Shurako barely half a league away, burning ancient ruins in their way that were said to be Akamashi's secret laboratory. If they found the circus, then Falis could be hidden in a trapdoor in the floor of the caravan that was used for smuggling goods... If it came to that. Milano had the strong impression that Heloise was a woman accustomed to avoid many regulations and regulators.

Dominikov and Jodo moved up the caravan steps. Milano's grandfather checked that the caravan door was sealed, tapped on the walls and floor, and sat near to a heavy brocade that would drown out some sound.

"I thought, master Jodo, that you would prefer the onion-head and his daughter not to overhear. Nor any who does not need to know," Dominikov said. "Your granddaughter also knows more than she tells, does she not?"

"My granddaughter has been told little to nothing, as befits one who never needed to know," Granfather protested. "Yet if we must then we must. What think you of Falis' progress, Milano?"

"That it is very pleasing. She has long been out of immediate danger and improves rapidly," Milano said.

"Master is tough," Dominikov said. "But she was not this tough. There are questions that need immediate answers. What do you know of Teoria, master gnome?"

"For you to know it by name is also suggestive," Jodo retorted. But he seemed to crumple in his seat. "Milano, recite to us the fable of the history of the world, that we may all know what you know."

 _It's a child's story_ , Milano inwardly protested, but a look at Grandfather's features told her that it was more than that.

"When it was taught us, I was young and I did not question it," she began. "It's a simple fable. There are no records of what really happened. But this is how it goes.

"Once, the gods walked the earth," she recited. "But the gods fought with each other in a war of fire that lasted for a hundred days and destroyed the earth. The gods realised what they had done, and wept for a hundred days more. The tears of the gods turned into rain that drowned the world. And a hundred days following the flood, the water disappeared. Humans returned to the world and life began once more. The Shandy era, our era, means the era of humans, where we live on and own the land."

Milano hadn't had a reason to think about it in years. The words and ideas had struck her in the retelling. "There's something behind it. Lies are like puzzle pieces, since even a falsehood tells you something of the person who spoke it." She'd quoted her grandfather and he gave a slight nod. "Fables are similar. The story is about cataclysm and disaster before our era, but it wasn't as simple as that. And as for strange weapons of the gods...

"Forland prospers and is a peaceful kingdom," Milano said slowly. "The King allows court scientists to craft devices that improve our farming and craftwork, and the balance and composition of the steel for our swords and armour. Our number of soldiers is small, but their lightweight though strong armour and the cutting edge of their blades make Forland's men coveted by other nations."

And yet this did not stop Kaito's regiment from being decimated overseas when they faced large numbers; nor did it stop them from being destroyed from within by one who instructed his monsters exactly how to attack. Milano bit her lip before she continued.

"Thus, we have some devices that other nations lack, and it is largely our trade and diplomacy that guarantee peace and prosperity. Except when we fight foreign wars under treaty. I daresay if Kaito's cavalry regiment had not been sent, then he should never have met Cecilia and so many would be still... But that cannot be changed. That is a digression. Forgive me, Grandfather.

"Princess Alita is integral to the weapons they desire."

"Teoria," Dominikov said in the pause that followed, and Grandfather gave a deep nod.

"That is what it is."

"What the hell is a Teoria?" the harsh voice asked. Milano looked at the Princess, propping herself up on her elbows, fiercely staring as if she'd heard every word. "Anyone want to tell me what a Teoria is? Dominikov?"

"You understood us," the shinigami said.

"Yeah, you were acting strange since we went into the castle." Falis rolled her eyes, but with some painful effort dropped back onto her pillows. Milano piled an extra one at the base of her neck.

"Teoria is an ancient and powerful art the property of the Crown of Forland," Jodo defined. "Powerful weapons, the details beyond me. Forgive us, Princess, for not telling you."

"Tell me now," Falis commanded.

"Teoria is the art of technology," Dominikov said. Milano saw shock in Grandfather's expression as Dominikov continued: shock that Falis' comrade knew at least as much of it—and maybe more—than Jodo the steward himself. "In the past, technology was used to its last drop in the world. It was humans who mastered the arts of it. When technology lost control, civilisation disintegrated and men killed each other. Thousands and millions of cyborgs and robots were sent into battle. Men understood how to create miracles and great things, how to travel to the stars and live immortal lives. Even how to reverse time and space.

"They were men, but they were more like gods than men," he said. "Thousands and millions of robots were sent into battle. The planet was destroyed."

The lamplight flickered oddly against the shades and hollows of Dominikov's cadaver's mask. His thin voice emerged from somewhere deep below it.

"But then a strength stronger than all the robots and all the scientists combined appeared. The world truly came to an end."

Falis pursed her lips, her eyes moving around as if she wished to ask _Then why are we still here?_

"Time and space were folded to recreate this world," Dominikov said. "Teoria was sealed away so that humans could not use it. Only small parts of lost technology remain: Chitabagu, soul-swapping, goblins, trolls, witches."

And Dominikov made a vague gesture to himself.

"But there was one family who were given the responsibility to guard the sealed Teoria. The family of Forland," Dominikov said. "They were permitted to draw from the lost technology and to unseal it. There is a key."

Jodo's walking stick met the floor as he replied with sureness. "The blood daughter of the reigning family is the only one who can become the key. As you deduce, Milano."

Falis stared as if she could not believe it. "And Alita knew of this all her life? Then by her contract it's now mine. She took on my fate. I'll accept hers. Is there anything else you're not telling me?"

She waved an imperious hand from her bed.

"Then give me time to think of it, friend. You too, sir Jodo. Milano, you may stay and fluff my pillow. In fact, help me up. I wish to see more."

Falis leant heavily on Milano as the two of them made it to the roof of the caravan, sitting above the gnomish driver's bald head in the fresh air. A fine breeze stirred across their faces. The bounty hunter breathed in deeply.

"Damned stuffy in there. Are we on the Kuruse road?"

Milano shook her head. "This track only runs parallel to it. That's the Qilin Mountain to the north." She called up the map in her head. "When we cross the next hill, this will be the first time in all of history that the Princess of Forland has left her country."

Falis frowned. "There's not weird mad science that causes the Princess' head to explode if she crosses the border, is there? A legend about some weapon of the gods that strikes her— _me_ —down in holy flame?"

"No. It is only custom," Milano said.

 _To travel to the stars, live immortal lives, destroy the world in fire, and control all of time and space._ Falis had not been wrong to speculate. Milano had certainly not known of the extent of this power in Alita's blood and it chilled her own. And had Falis managed to swap bodies with Milano in turn as she'd suggested, it would have then belonged to... None would ever want such a terrible gift. None should ever want this terrible gift, as Milano Entolasia knew very well indeed.

"In fact the Princess' role is usually to stay in Forland Castle all her life. Her brother is to rule the kingdom and sire heirs. The Princess is permitted to marry, but the last Princess of Forland did not. I remember her."

Falis placed a hand on Milano's shoulder, curling strong fingers around her upper arm. It could have been for support for herself while she recovered from her wounds, or held other meanings.

"Tell me," Falis said. "Tell me about this fate."

The shy five-year-old fair-haired Princess was a year younger than Milano, though she'd grown taller than her in the end. Grandfather had instructed Milano to be very polite and on her best behaviour; she was intended to give the Princess a companion of her own age and a maid. Alita herself was timid, obedient, and frightened of everything. Milano had soon realised why Alita was the way she was.

Alita shook her head, puzzled by the simplest child's game. "I don't know how to play this, Milano. The Princess would never...never think it was right."

"The Princess does not like it if I speak too loudly or laugh," Alita whispered.

"I cannot stay with you...I have to fetch the Princess' medicine and rub her back."

"I'm sorry, but we can't make noise. It will make the Princess ill again."

Alita cried. "I have tried and tried and I cannot remember the steps of the prayers. The Princess needs me to know it but I cannot yet."

"The Princess requires me. I must go to her."

Milano said, "The Princess of Forland when Alita was born was the sister of her great-grandfather. His _older_ sister, by twenty years."

Falis whistled between her teeth. Milano remembered how frightened she was the first time she saw the ancient Princess, lying nine-tenths of the way to death in her bed with strings of white hair and drool over her mouth, brown scraping fingernails crawling through the air, the royal bedroom smelling of old urine. And how she had learnt that Alita Forland was in truth more brave than Milano would ever be, for all Alita screamed at millipedes.

"The Kings between the old Princess' brother and Alita's father had no daughters. And so she lived on, much longer than any human should." Fear that Milano hadn't felt since she was a child seeped through her words. Perhaps now she was grown-up she could fear the old Princess less. "She was waiting for Alita. I understand that now. The Teoria kept her alive long after she should have died, long after she was already a mummified corpse in almost everything. She was scarcely more than skin stretched over bones, but her eyes were conscious and her hands were claws. She would always have Alita with her, to tend to her needs and to learn from her. Alita didn't know how to play because she lived with that old woman all her life. She called Alita to her in that cracked old voice. Alita would brush back her hair and slowly drip her medicine into her mouth, bathe her skin and rub liniment into her back. And the old Princess would say other things, things I never knew. The Princess of Forland remained to train her successor.

"When she finally died I thought that Alita was free."

"That's crappy," Falis said. "I'd hate to live that long. I'd want to go out fighting as soon as I knew my body couldn't handle it any more. I'd fall on my sword rather than that fate. Poor lady."

She meant the old Princess, not Alita's troubles in caring for her. Milano had only felt the opposite and her own childish fears. This was the same compassion that Alita displayed. Milano stared, but it seemed that Falis saw something wrong in her face.

"You miss your Alita and it's weird seeing her look out through my eyes," the mercenary said with a snort, turning her head aside.

Milano leant closer to Falis, the wind whipping her auburn hair and tangling it with Falis' fair streams. "I do. I was kinder when I was with her," Milano said. "Alita made people kinder."

—


	9. Liquidation

It was always on highly rare and unusual occasions that the veteran bladesmaster Falis ever could be afraid. Still less would she show it...and only circumstances of unbelievable horror could ever cause her to beg for mercy.

"I can't! I'm doomed! Please, someone, save me!"

"There is no choice."

"Yes there is! I can still beg for help!"

"But there is no one to help."

"It wasn't even my fault!"

"Yet you must bear the burden of it."

The mercenary victor of a thousand battles slumped in utter defeat.

"I'm begging you...I really am..."

Milano fixed the spangled rosette that held the costume together at the shoulders.

"You will go into the ring tonight in place of Imeoni the acrobat, give a fine performance of sword dancing on the high wires, and save the circusfolk who have saved us. Besides, no one will look for a Princess when they see a performer.

"And secondly, I am also doing my part!" Milano adjusted the heavy fringed scarf around her red hair and raised her needle again. "Now hold still, or I'll manage to stitch you along with your seam."

She believed it was called stage-fright. "Don't worry. You will live through this," she said, looking Falis in the eye. "For luck..."

Surprised at her own daring, she leant up and kissed Falis' cheek. Then Falis grabbed her arm and stared fiercely into her face, as if she had just woken a dormant volcano by her action.

"Was the real Alita your friend? Something more? I know you two were close. Is this only because I look like the real thing?"

Milano would not back away. "You are not like Alita and I don't think of you as the same," Milano said. "She and I were friends from childhood. With you it is very different...another thing entirely. You're brave and kind, someone new— Like a winter wind, or a fir-needle fire, shocking and pungent and resilient. You make me try to speak in romantic metaphors. I trust you. I trust everything that you do."

"If you trust me," Falis said. The red blush had gathered in her cheeks again and Milano thought it the most endearing thing in the world.

Milano's heart beat with a strange new joy like the wings of a hawk against the sun. She felt the same thrumming in Falis' veins as they grasped each other, skin laid on skin as if lightning built between them. She touched Falis' lips with her own mouth in a lingering, careful kiss that she broke from after the first electric moment. It was strange and wonderful and new, and how beautiful it was when Falis looked at her and gently prepared for more.

'Quarter to showtime, quarter to show time, everybody!" the roustabout Amarai screamed, thrusting her head in the doorway. She was a small wrinkled gnome with a head of hair too perfect a shining violet-black to be real and a scream that could have cut Forland steel. "Everyone out of the dressingroom! Quarter to showtime, quarter to showtime, quarter to showtime!"

Falis nodded grimly, and enfolded Milano's shoulders in a brief warm embrace. "Continue this after the show. Come back to me then."

"Promise."

Milano rushed out, gasping, smiling as if nothing in any of the kingdoms could ever harm her again. Her breath was taken away with happiness. There was astonishing beauty in the world and nobody could ever be as radiant as she and Falis tonight. The sun set in a glorious fire of rose and gold, and so many wonderfully happy people were walking through the circus and looking to be entertained...

The clone ran up to her, beaming—her face so different from either Falis or the true Alita. In truth these events tonight were her fault: she had attempted to cook, and accidentally poisoned four acrobats, two roustabouts, and the fortune teller Madame Akobe. The victims, pale and meek from nausea, were still recovering.

"There is something I must tell you," the clone said, capturing Milano's right hand in both of her own and smiling from ear to ear. She had cut her long hair and it foamed about her face like a cloud of sunlight. "I've found my purpose in life! You need not call me the clone any longer! My name is Evita Ana Yuna Akamashi. Akamashi for my father, Ana and Yuna for my sisters, and Evita because it is like and different to my clone-progenitor. Evita means living. I want to live.

"I'm Evita. I like having short hair better than long hair, since it gets in the way when I read. I'm terrible at cooking. The thing I like to do best of all is read books. I hate the taste of marzipan, and I love the taste of oranges best of all...did the original Alita like oranges?" she asked anxiously. "Technically my tastebuds are genetically identical but I have a different experiential history."

"Not unusally," Milano said, and relaxed. She could not be cross at the clone when there was so much to be happy about. Evita beamed.

"My favourite colour is yellow because it's cheerful. I also love my father's hot chocolate, and I love learning more about the world, and the little crinkly sounds when you rub a bag of millet against itself, and..." Milano was saved by Heloise.

The Ringmaster herself was part of the show for the milling crowds. Her costume was more resplendent than ever and a black whip in her hands cracked above her head, drawing intricate patterns like octopus limbs in the air. "Fortune-teller!" Heloise called. "Go to your role this instant!"

Milano thus took her place in Madame Akobe's tent, hit by the smell of incense so heavy it seemed palpable in the small space. A lock of her ginger hair fell out of the fortune-teller's headscarf again.

"We gnomes have a natural gift for it," Madame Akobe had protested weakly from her sickbed. "Tell the glimpses of the Beyond for the customers. Or, if that fails, simply tell them what they most want to hear."

Milano strongly suspected the latter. Grandfather had no patience with flim-flam and mystical gibberish about the nature of gnomes, and he was a gnome.

"Gnomes are merely another kind of human," he'd say. "Petty tricks are only a way of cheating money out of customers. It's a very immoral way to live." Heloise playfully poked him on the cheek with her fan at that one.

"I believe there was a time when gnomes did not exist," Dominikov had replied. "The people called gnomes today were in the world when Pete and I were produced, but I remember that I read they were an artificially induced sub-species. The work of Teoria. But perhaps I misread it or forgot the memory."

Grandfather sniffed. "Indeed you read a fairy tale for infants. We are no more nor less than human. My own Milano and I had four children together, which proves it."

"Yet you have more reason than the average human to know of Teoria," Dominikov replied, and Grandfather had not denied that one.

Milano looked into Madame Akobe's crystal ball now. It spun gently at a touch, a smooth surface with the inside fogged like breath on a wintry day. Two candles in the shape of dragons dripped wax on either side of it, dirtying the velvet cloth that covered the small round table. In a good light would be clear that the cloth was threadbare and the glamours of the fortune-teller tawdry, but the point of this circus act was to be disguised...

"You are welcome to Madame Akobe's knowledge of the future," Milano announced in a distorted voice. "Cross my palm with silver to know the secrets that I know."

"You'll meet a handsome, dashing stranger and fall in love and live happily ever after," Milano predicted.

"You'll meet a brave, kind stranger and fall in love and live happily ever after," Milano predicted.

"You'll meet a strong, trustworthy stranger and fall in love and live happily ever after," Milano predicted.

"I've been married twenty-two years this autumn," the latest customer said.

"Um. I'll...do a card reading for you, then?" Milano swallowed and shook her head. "Past, present, and future, all laid out for you in a harmonic pattern." If only she could remember the names of all the designs! But surely she could make something up. He was a tall man, roughly dressed in the style of this area, with kind eyes and hair the colour of a Milhan goat's sleek hide in the candlelight. He wore a handfast token about his neck, she was sorry to note at last. _He is obviously happy in his marriage so where is his spouse? This village has a trading market therefore he is a traveller..._ "You have bought and sold in recent days. Your wife remains on the farm."

"That's good; you have hit a little."

Milano's hands lingered on the cards. "I see the King of Tears in the past quadrant. But reverse him and he may be taken as a favourable sign." To her it seemed the King wept in blood. "Then in the present it is the Lady of Swords. A great and beautiful sign of action for good purpose." A pale, determined woman warrior. Milano saw Falis' lines and attitude in it but of course she would do so. "In the future the Void Jester. He is...not a good card." Laughing black nothingness shone from mad eyes—the heavily painted picture on the card looked like an ordinary well-dressed man at a celebration until you saw the strange shape and taint of the eyes. "Perhaps bad weather will come to your land. I will try again." She stared into the crystal ball. "I will vision for you in this orb, for some say that time is not as simple as past and present and future but an endless circle that consumes its own tail like the Ouroboros beast of lore..."

The fog of it caught her attention. The art of it, Madame Akobe claimed, was to stare into the featureless crystal and wait for a mist to form before the eyes. This would of course be the result of the flickering light of the candles. Milano found herself taken by it; she had not seen the like before; the depths of glass held her focus.

When she was young Grandfather taught her tricks to manipulate bookkeeping numbers in her head. You held a list of memorised facts in one part of your mind and performed the operation with another. The candlelight shapes in the crystal ball echoed Grandfather's nose and head. Milano let herself go, though there was little of conscious thought about it. She touched a strange destiny she had never known before.

The fog fell through one part of her mind like a cloud of rain, and the other part sailed away forward like the helm of a fishing boat cutting through waters still as glass.

Milano saw a large bird whirring into the night away from a disturbance in Erure forest, squawking its complaints at the top of its voice under the cold light of the moon...

Milano saw a dark-haired child huddled inside a burnt-out house and did not understand why this was, smelling burning flesh from a body upon the doorstep that clutched a katana between charred hands...

Milano saw Akamashi's shadow on the wall holding a saucepan, sitting around a hearth with the shapes of two young girls and a third shadow in a huge glass jar...

Milano was dancing with the first Alita, who smiled sadly and stepped into the arms of her next partner her brother Kaito...

The eyes of Milano's soldier brother Fiorenze were desperate and his freckles stood out like flyspots on his pale face. His damp red hair clung to his forehead below his helm and dirt was spattered across his beloved mouth. A battlefield without end stretched all around him. The blade of a pike ran through his body on the ground and he screamed while the smell of blood and feces filled the area. When Milano looked down her own hands were drenched in blood and she knew that the pain of a world where this could happen must be ended forever, but they were not her hands and belonged to another...

Milano saw the light and joy of the glorious gnome circus Eiko, lantern-lit inside the great tent. Spangled acrobats danced across high wires and trapeze rungs above a wide net. One acrobat in particular was dazzling, using a sword as a tool to dance and leaping wildly between the trapeze wires. There was a deadly wild beauty in Falis' skill and tonight she used it for joy.

But dark men in black helms flowed into the tent like a tide of ants devouring a scrap of meat. Torches bloomed above their heads in ghastly red-and-yellow flares like funeral pyres. The thick red material of the circus tent caught fire, was devoured, the flames rising to the tip of the big top. Blood and smoke lingered in the back of Milano's throat, and the huge flaming tent collapsed on itself like a grave...

"What is it? What did you see?" the man was asking.

_I was flying_ , Milano thought, _flying through the stars. I can do something wonderful that I never thought was possible..._

And she remembered the horror of what she had seen like a lightning bolt from the sky.

"You have to leave here." She stood up and started packing away the fortune-teller's gear before she realised that was pointless. "Something terrible is about to happen in this circus. Go now. If you leave you will be safe. I must warn others." She flung on Madame Akobe's cloak.

"You're from Forland, aren't you?" the farmer said. She must have been using her normal accent. "My mam came from there. If there's something that can be done, miss, I'll help." His eyes were kind but Milano wondered how much he knew.

"Then get others to move away from the circus, calmly. They have not come here after you."

Milano's cloak blew in the night winds as she crossed to the big top. She ran, for she knew so surely that something terrible would soon descend. The ring was dark. The spectators sat in shadows, and the only light was held by lampmen on high platforms, amber beams shining on the spangled acrobats who leapt like birds. Falis balanced on the high wires, a bright star in the firmament of the dark tent. Her sword flashed brightly and she flew between the wires like a swallow spiralling upward for sheer joy of the sky.

And Milano began to cry a hoarse-voiced warning, even while dark figures gathered in the back of the circus tent and raised vicious longbows. Another acrobat screamed as the first fiery arrow whistled through the air.

A lampman fell dead on his platform, a black arrow in his back. His light rolled away from his right hand. There, at the end of the platform, the tent material flapped in the night air. A sudden wind brought it into close contact with the flame.

Milano rushed away from the fire. It was spreading, the circus tent burning. People screamed as they tried to flee. Soldiers like black ants were moving onward.

Falis stayed up on the wires, a white bird flying through fire and darkness. She swung on a trapeze to grab a corner of the tent. She flew. The blaze caught to more sections of the fabric, spilling embers onto disarrayed archers. The main poles remained steady. Only Falis remained of the acrobats, spinning across and back.

People screamed in panic. There was a man's voice raised above the chaos, though. He spoke like he was gently herding sheep.

"Steady on! Come with me, it's to be all right. A gap through here. Careful now!"

It was Milano's friend from the fortune-teller's tent. He was doing well with a surprisingly dependable tone and strength. Milano looked to her side—there was a crush of people struggling to escape. She did her part.

"The soldiers are not after you! Help those who can't walk and things will be fine!" she lied. She tried to get the non-combatants out—lifted up a small boy crushed by the crowds, handing him back to his sister—she could trust Falis to fight while she helped save people—

Milano turned when she heard a scream. It wasn't a scream of pain or death but a scream of frustration. It came from a slim, tall male figure, who had leapt up to the high wires with his own sword and joined Falis there.

He was Kaito, the treacherous Prince. The swordsman regarded as the best Forland had for generations, and the war leader who'd fought far away with Milano's brothers though could not bring them back with him. The villain in black armour who fought to destroy everything Milano held dear.

Falis and Kaito clashed between the trapezes, amid the fire. They were both incredibly fast and strong and masters of their art. Falis' katana wove a swift bright pattern in the air while Kaito's black sword met each attack. She swung one-handed from one bar to the next, her spangles shining in the glare of flame. Kaito followed her, crying out frustration and rage even as he kept pace.

Milano grabbed a bucket of water that someone behind her in the line provided—people were cooperating to douse the fire. She laid it on the circus tent.

_If we cause enough chaos_ , she thought, _we can surely disappear—_

She saw Pete steering away the crowd of civilians, flinging aside enemy soldiers as if they were toy dolls when they got in his way. She couldn't see Dominikov or the clone or Akamashi.

Milano gauged the posts that held up the trapeze wires. They were well-crafted metal and wood that she'd seen placed together. If she mapped it correctly, she thought, this one here, she could pull out enough pins from the base and when Kaito set his weight on it he would fall...

Milano started her task with the help of a pair of cloth shears she'd tucked in her dress.

She did not notice the man who crept behind her and held a sword to her throat. His breath smelt of garlic and his uniform was wrong, Milano noticed in terror. He was a foreign soldier. This meant that Kaito made a deal with another country—she was glad that it was not someone she knew—and this man would kill her.

Milano couldn't let Falis fall in her fight with Kaito. She refused to scream. Perhaps this would be quickly over or perhaps a miracle would preserve her.

Far above, Falis had seen.

" _Milano!_ "

Something white and determined swept through the air. Kaito was between Milano and Falis and raised his sword as she lunged toward him. But this time Falis' body was inhumanly fast, much too fast for him. The cut was clean and neat and something fell down from the trapeze, glittering in the flames. Kaito screamed again, but this was for pain. He was clinging to the rope with his left hand. His right arm was missing, severed at the shoulder. Milano saw a fountain of blood spout out of Kaito's right side, and then she felt another waterfall of blood over her.

The head of the soldier who held her rolled to the ground away from his neck and he dropped his sword. And when Falis looked into her face, Milano couldn't see the one she loved but only fanatic crimson eyes that burned hellishly like the flames around them—

Milano ducked out of pure frightened instinct the moment before the sword whistled above her head. Pieces of her auburn hair fell to the ground. Falis leapt forward. There was another soldier, this one in Forland colours— _oh it is Aldrias_ , Milano had just time to think, _that is the way he holds his shoulders_ —and then the Princess-of-the-cranes katana gutted him, straight through his ribs and out and up through the sound of splintering bone. The Princess of Forland moved to her next kill.

_That is old Jontom's body! He held me when I was a baby and gave my mother my christening-cup—_

"Stop!" Milano screamed. Aldrias' blood bathed her. She screamed again. "Someone stop her! Pete, Dominikov, clone, anyone! She's gone wrong!"

Blue smoke hissed into the tent. Milano felt a sudden dizziness and saw Dominikov's scythe flash through the dark. Then Pete leapt down and lifted her bodily away from the fire and smoke. She dropped to her knees on black grass, coughing out her lungs. A moment later Pete returned, carrying an unconscious Falis and her bloodied sword.

_How many others did she kill?_ Milano thought. She heard horses neighing crossly.

"Good, you obeyed orders," Dominikov was saying. Akamashi and the clone were leading some military horses, carrying a smoke weapon apiece. "Can you ride, Miss Milano? Of course you can. Get up this instant!"

"I can't," the clone was muttering—Evita. She clung to Milano's back as they were seated. "Tell me again how this interaction with organic members of the equine genus is effective?"

Pete was roughly perched on a heavy carthorse with Grandfather clinging to his hips. Dominikov handled Falis' body. Akamashi held an unsteady seat—many was the time the old King kindly invited him to participate in royal hunts, and he turned traitor later on—

Falis was a murderer, Akamashi a betrayer, the clone an impostor, and Dominikov and Pete—what were they but manifestations of Teoria that could kill horribly? Milano guided her horse in that dreadful flight through the dark, leaving screams and blood and death behind them.

When the streaks of dawn light began to pass through the sky, they found shelter to rest the horses and hide. They had returned to the place they had come from: the outlying part of Erure Forest in Forland, where the trees were already blackly dense and dark and strange things rustled weirdly in the distance. Milano dismounted, pulled the clone down, and secured the horse next to a small stream. She washed her hands of the blood on them, removed the horse's tack piece by piece, rubbed her down, and only then turned.

"Milano. The Princess has awakened," Dominikov said.

Falis lay peacefully on the grass. She roused herself slowly, rubbing her forehead and brushing her light hair out of her face. She left behind a trail of spangles on the ground, and there was dried blood caked on her hands and hair.

"Wha...what happened?" Falis asked. "Crap, my head feels like it's splitting apart. Like one hell of a hangover. That guy. Kaito. He was there." Falis saw the blood on her hands. She suddenly stared at Milano. "You were there. I had to protect you, I did— Something happened. Tell me what the hell it was!"

Milano had thought she loved her. There was nothing left of that feeling but a cold black ice inside her. If Falis had only deprived Kaito of his arm, that would be fine. Kaito deserved that and more. But to kill men who were only doing their jobs, that was evil. Falis' desperation lingered in her words. Milano let her wait for the answer.

Milano saw the same hands that killed, the monster with blood-red eyes in Alita's flesh and bone. She hurled each word like a dagger and saw them draw heart's blood from the mercenary.

"You're a murderer and I will never forgive you," Milano said.

—


	10. Revolution

Milano was a pragmatist. She accepted that she'd lost what she thought she loved and found only a killer. She must work with the things that existed. Since that time she and Falis barely looked at each other.

Grandfather sat down with her in their rough camp. Pete and Dominikov were behind him. "Heloise instructed me to give you this, before even the fire," he reluctantly said. "I think it worthless trash...but I have heard that you realised the attack before it came."

It was a small glass ball, the shape of an apple. The mist inside was similar to Madame Akobe's crystal. Milano turned it over in her hands.

"You have a scrap of Teoria's gift inside you," Dominikov said lazily. "Just a tiny thread of the parts that created gnomes. Most of you is human, but you may tap into the Teoria energies just enough for some purposes. With an external focus, some gnomes have the ability to piece together their subconscious knowledge about the world and judge the mathematical probability of future events. This gift exploits subliminal perceptions and creates a mixture of self-fulfilling and likely predictions. In other words, precognition."

"What you saw was of factors you knew. Is that correct?" Jodo said. "You were aware that Kaito would try to find the Princess; you do not know nothing of his methods; and you hit upon a correct prediction."

"I saw some things from the past as well," Milano said. She spun the apple loosely between her hands. "Most of them were things I knew something about..." Erure Forest, Alita, her brother's death with Kaito, Falis in the circus. "Except for one, a dark-haired child in a burnt-out village. But we ourselves have caused burning enough." She turned her hands over the glass ball. "What would you have me do?"

"Know that Master has never harmed the young or innocent," Pete Armstrong rumbled. "It is not in her. What happened was something outside her will. Something in her new body."

Milano shook her head. Pete looked deeply unhappy.

"She loved you," he said.

Milano ignored him. "The path before us must be to attack the castle while Kaito is wounded," she explained. The glass apple turned smoothly between her hands. "I will search for...the mathematical probability of future events."

This time the state of mind did not come nearly so easily as before. Milano spun and stared at the glass, willing the mists inside to change and reflect her decision. The dark thoughts in her were not easily put aside.

Grey mists, cutting through them like a white bird in the sky, then the threads of likely occurrences...

Cecilia the sorceress laughed at them. "You think I would not catch you in our trap, little mice?" she said. She raised her magical device and this time there was no ducking and no dodging left, and all but Falis the killer were made only ashes...

"Those born to be great must wield great powers," Cecilia boasted. "I destroy what happens to be there!"

In the castle there was always the pale-haired witch waiting for them no matter how Milano turned the threads in her mind.

She was on the dizzying edge of a cliff, hurled down toward jagged black rocks below...

The father of the dark-haired child was a blacksmith who made the best swords in five villages. Day after day he slaved on his masterwork from meteorite steel while his daughter tended the forge.

But the day the magnificent sword was finished was the day disaster came to his village.

The blacksmith took up his sword and attacked the one who tried to kill everyone. He hid his daughter inside his house and faced the monster down.

"I will never stand down," he boasted. On his knees now, he clutched the katana with hands charred black.

"Why did you do it?" he asked. The monster's high lilting voice laughed like silver water over a rock.

"Because it happened to be there."

The girl lost her father and her whole village but refused to weep. In the glass Milano saw the small dark-haired girl take up her father's belongings and walk, walk with burns on her feet to find her travelling mother and find a way to grow strong enough for revenge. It cut her to the heart.

_If only we could save..._

Milano thought of a better way for quick stealth.

—

"We know that Lady Hilliardo's mine workers are ill done by, and it's deeply unlikely Kaito has improved their position," Jodo explained the plan. "There's no time to waste."

They crept into Lady Hilliardo's territory far away from the luxury of her orange mansion. The iron miners were given the roughest of huts in crude communal conditions, with chinks in the log cabin walls allowing wind to rush in and freeze skin and bone, and barely such a thing as a privy. Male and female miners worked alike with their children left to grow up in such conditions, and any child who could pass for fourteen was allowed to work a full day's labour below the earth.

_Alita would have done better than this as queen_ , Milano thought.

The apparent leader of the miners was a quiet junior foreman called Bregird. He was in late middle age, bent and bowed by hard work. He had grey streaks in his beard, clear grey eyes, and there were faint laugh lines at the corners of his eyes. His voice was low but distinct, and when he spoke the other miners stopped to listen.

"Kaito is mad and serves a sadistic witch called Cecilia," Jodo said. "He will broker any deals with Lady Hilliardo that benefit him at your expense. Your position will never improve under him, and we can offer much in return for your support of the true Queen.

"She is the one who fought for Forland to stop the coup and defend the land from monsters," he said. Falis stood impassively beside him, not saying a word. They had left Akamashi and the clone behind, since those would be inconvenient here.

"Lady Hilliardo cheats on her taxes, embezzles the profits that you create for her, and blatantly disobeys Forland's laws of work," Milano said. "Queen Alita will ensure that she answers for these crimes. I am a maid, a worker like you. This is a cause I support as well. I knew Princess Alita since she was young and I know Alita would see justice done."

"But you want something serious in exchange," Bregird said. "Most don't come to places like this until they want something."

"What we want is simple to accomplish," Jodo said. He outlined the plan. "If we are fortunate, they wil not even consider a link between us. If the worst comes, then we were mere opportunists who seized the chance innocently created by you. In fact, if the worst comes, then you will not be worse off than if you refused your help."

"Then we want more," Bregird said. "Politicians make promises they forget to keep when they're surrounded by others of their kind. We want a promise that the Queen won't forget us."

"Reforms shall be made to the constitution of Forland to protect workers' rights," Milano suggested. "Additionally, we offer a change that the Queen's council of ten advisers will contain a minimum of two commoners as well as at least one female member."

Bregird considered. "We commoners make nine out of ten of Forland's people," he said. "We deserve more."

Milano smiled inwardly. "We are willing to bargain," she said neatly.

It was easy for Falis to consent to the deal. Jodo was never in favour of swift change in the country, but the truth was that both Milano and the mercenary had sentiments in favour of commoners like themselves.

"Tell us what to do," Bregird offered. "Whatever you want, whatever you can give, it will be yours. We've placed our trust in you."

"We give you surety." Milano reached inside her apron. She drew out what rightfully belonged to Alita—not Falis, not Evita, the one who should be true Queen of Forland, the one who'd never betrayed anyone. The crown jewels that no one living was fit to wear, the crown that was mistakenly given to the false Alita. "Keep this for the true Queen. When the day comes, it will be up to you to restore the mark of Forland royalty."

"A good job, granddaughter," Jodo remarked quietly as they departed, "you've bound their loyalty to death if need be."

Milano stared aside, for death it would likely be.

—

"Free us now! Fair wage for all! Save our mine workers!" chanted the ragged protestors in Forland's castle, a mixture of men, women, and children. The Forland soldiers were few in numbers and had little inclination to fight the striking workers. The castle was in disarrayed disorganisation. Kaito had only recently been dragged back and lay in his bed between death and life, according to the latest reports. His witch Cecilia would likely not care about a petty dispute. The men who were there were in thorough disarray, and now if any was the time to strike.

Milano's visions in glass took her to amazing heights of her newly discovered gift, but the best probable outcome she was able to reach from this scheme always led to a flood of strange bright light, at the moment that Falis' fingers were pressed to a hidden oak door. And after that came nothing else.

Pete, Dominikov, and Akamashi crept through passages in the cellars; Falis, Milano, Jodo, and Evita came disguised as fellow miners. They slipped away from the protest once rotten vegetables had started to be thrown. Grandfather had protested much at the shaving of his beard and pigtail and the filthy overall that tried to pass him off as an unusually short miner, but it was a risk they were obliged to take. Jodo was the only one other than the royal family who knew where to find Teoria.

The oaken door stood high and imposing down a chilly, frozen passage that Milano had never set foot in before. But silken-quiet metal hinges had opened an oiled way for them as if others had most recently come.

"Touch it quickly," Jodo told Falis. "Once the Princess is inside and secures the door, none can enter."

Patterns of golden light in strange strings and curves flowed like water the moment that the Princess' skin came in contact with the dark door. First it was black, the next moment lit from lintel to threshold; Milano took a step back from this magic and almost the same moment Falis suspiciously snatched her hand away. Then Falis reached for it again, but they were not alone.

Tinkling female laughter like glass bells echoed in the dark passageway. Someone was coming who did not have to hurry to find them.

"There was only one place to go," Cecilia the sorceress said, beautiful and deadly as a falling star, and leisurely raised her dreaded device.

"Princess," Jodo said urgently, "remember that the beetle wears a carapace only over his vulnerable parts."

Then white lightning flashed all around them.

"Grandfather!" Milano screamed. He lay still. She staggered to her feet. There was breath—yes, there was breath. Falis was rushing into the fight. Milano set her grandfather below an alcove and raised her chin.

"I will never stand down," Falis said formally, grimly, and Milano was reminded of her delirium in the cart that her reason to fight the witch was personal.

"Now where have I heard that line before?" Cecilia mused. She shifted delicately on one foot as Falis struck at her and laid another deadly volley of her magic. Falis was desperately dodging, pacing quick semicircles around her. It left Cecilia open.

Evita took out a cylindrical weapon from her cloak and let fly. Cecilia promptly aimed back. Milano heard her scream and saw her drop a tangled metal mass.

"Father _never_ got his hands on the really good technology!" Evita complained. "She is too powerful!"

She was. But, Milano thought grimly, they were far from helpless.

"Evita! Have you seen any oil near here?" Milano asked, remembering smooth hinges and a few messy drips on the ground. The girl summoned up that eidetic memory of hers.

"Small blue canister, two passages north of here on the edge of a low shelf by the entryway!"

Milano grabbed her arm and they set off running, away from Falis' desperate battle. Milano didn't look back.

"Oh, I _see_!" Evita gabbled. It was a fool's plan. Milano set her teeth. The important thing for Forland was to purchase time.

"Because it happened to be there," Cecilia boasted to Falis as she knelt on the ground, "I destroyed your village to test this out." She paced slowly toward the fallen princess. "Don't be afraid. You're too valuable to kill."

Hearing those words Milano remembered a vision. The defiant little girl taking up her father's sword, she'd seen that in mist and glass and felt a desperate sorrow for her. This was _the same_ —

Falis curled over herself, defeated and vulnerable. Cecilia leisurely prepared to do something. Milano clutched Evita's arm, holding her back for one more moment, hoping against hope—

Falis sprang up and struck. She wouldn't stand down. Cecilia had worn beautiful silks with a soft purple hooded cloak, high-heeled boots in white leather, and a thin elaborate strip of jewelled armour across her collarbones. Falis' katana arced in one direction, her wazikashi in the other. The armour—the carapace—shattered, and for only a second Cecilia seemed discomfited, raising a hand to clutch her chest.

_Now._

Milano poured out the oil.

"It seems I took you too lightly." Cecilia brushed away the fragments of armour. There was a dull purple gemstone that hadn't been part of the strip of metal; it was embedded in her skin rather than merely worn. She stepped back. "I won't make that mistake again. The game ends..."

She slipped on the oil spill at her feet. For even powerful sorceresses were at the mercy of impractical shoes and friction. Before Cecilia could get up, the Princess-of-the-Cranes pierced the gem in her chest, shattering it into a thousand fragments. Falis fell back.

Cecilia screamed. Her hair whitened. Her skin tightened into a mass of wrinkles. Her eyes faded to dim cataracts. Her fingernails grew over shrivelling flesh. Her body collapsed on itself as if she'd suddenly aged a hundred years, and aged a hundred more each instant. Then there was a flash of light in a colour impossible to describe in words. Milano blinked. There was nothing left of Kaito's sorceress but a pile of bloodstained clothing.

_Tonight we have achieved one aim_ , Milano thought wearily. _On to the next._

A man screamed with much the same voice as Cecilia, and then Kaito had found them. Falis backed away from the oil spill, cautious with the way she held her body. Kaito bore down on her. This was a changed Kaito. His right arm was an inhuman creation made of some strange metal. A bright purple gemstone glowed in the centre of his hand. It could only be Cecilia's sorcery that animated it. His arm seemed to move of a swift inhuman will of its own rather than any choice belonging to him. He held a vast dark sword and beat Falis back with each blow. They grew closer to the door to Teoria.

Milano rushed forward. The next one would surely—would... Kaito pushed Falis against the door to Teoria at last and held her there. She fought him, but the gold was flaring now and the door— Milano ran more quickly than ever.

Milano felt a cold blast of icy air. She tumbled in with Falis and Kaito, falling into a void, pushing through golden light in an abyss that led she knew not where.

—


	11. Retribution

Teoria.

Milano landed on her hands and knees and fell away from the clang of swords. She tried to open the door, but it was now sealed to the outside world and their allies. Falis and Kaito fought between levers and between mysterious colossal globes. They were bathed in strange artificial light that seemed to come from no source whatsoever. They fought below devices that Milano knew nothing of, past geometrical shapes that encompassed dimensions impossible to understand, and through passages that seemed to stretch into miles larger than the entire Forland castle that contained them.

This was the battle for the control of Forland's Teoria.

Kaito's artificial arm moved quickly and his sword left a trail of blood along Falis' chest. It was a deep wound, and yet she would not stop fighting. She tripped and fell into a lever, leaving bloodstains along a table. It lit up in response to her.

"Leave her alone!" Milano shouted, and threw the nearest heavy object she could detach—a sort of doorknob, she supposed. Kaito did not react to the blow. He flung the Princess across the room, yelling:

"Teoria, hear my command!"

Milano pulled a metal stick from a device and ran to a globe above where Kaito hurt the Princess. She levered it into the join, willing to kill Kaito if she could smash his skull this way. The ancient Teoria did not yield to her brute force.

"Teoria," Falis cried, and the lights in the room seemed to dance for her, "hear _my_ command!"

Kaito rushed her, flinging her into a pillar.

"Teoria, preserve Forland!" Falis called. She fell on another lit lever. Lights flashed—one, then two, then three, four, five...

A great sound came like the very world itself moving and shuddering. Milano fell to the ground and placed her hands to her ears, because she could do nothing else. Forland—everything for Forland. Let Forland be saved even if the cost was high for them in this place. Falis, bloody but daring everything—Falis the killer—Falis the saviour—

Kaito threw Falis across the hall, head-first into a shelf. She fell and did not get up. Blood soaked her white dress. Then Kaito turned to Milano. Milano took to her heels.

_If he chases me I win time. If he chases I win time_ , she thought. Falis would rescue her if she could, if she woke up in time. It surprised her that she did not doubt that at all.

This was a twisted version of all the games of chase she once played with her brothers. They'd longer legs and were always swifter. Milano used to try thin goat tracks and fragile branches that her heavy brothers couldn't follow her by. Here she found railings to slide down, strange small ways to duck into, but Kaito was far more agile than she could ever be. He brought her down halfway through a part of the Teoria that shone a pale blue, and held her close as a sister.

"This is not my choice," Milano heard Kaito whisper, clearly in her ear, "this part of the plan was not my own choice."

He touched her face and thrust his artificial right hand down her throat. She could not even scream. The metal tendril split and changed between her teeth—Milano felt the sharp edges of the glowing purple gem inside there—and Kaito blocked her nose and stroked her throat until she'd swallowed it. Kaito held her loosely then, his right arm hanging limply at his side.

"GET AWAY FROM HER!"

Falis flew through the light, and in her crimson eyes was the same monstrous look she'd borne at the circus that night. She fell on Kaito in a frenzy—split his helm, shattered his sword, kicked him back against the wall—and drew back her arm to kill again.

Falis' sword stopped an inch before Kaito's left eye. Milano looked in unbelieving shock at her. The berserk light faded from her eyes and her right arm shook uncontrollably, as if it took an impossible effort of will to stem the bloodlust. Falis spoke with effort, her words clear and strong and all from her own heart.

"I won't be a murderer," Falis said. "But you've come damn close to becoming one of my exceptions."

The flat of the blade hit Kaito's neck and he slumped into unconsciousness.

—

Milano visioned...

Cecilia lay indifferently in Kaito's large bed, coupling with him only for the sake of something to do. She barely cared for this form of entertainment and she knew that nothing female could ever satisfy Kaito. And also the one he thought he loved was dead, a preoccupation that drove him further into intriguing destruction.

"We will win," he was promising, hoarse-voiced. "The human world has nothing but cruelty and coldness. Teoria. The world can come to an end."

"It will," Cecilia assured. "I shall love to witness that great thing."

"In the past humans already destroyed the world once through our wars," Kaito said. "Yet we still fight and kill each other, while begging for the scraps of the old world's technology. What is the point for anyone to live in such a world?"

"No point indeed," Cecilia purred.

"No one shall feel sorrow again," Kaito said. He was handsome and fair to a human's eyes, and Cecilia knew that his fellow sheep would love him even as he led them all to a great slaughter. "Every living thing shall be destroyed."

"Every living thing of this world," Cecilia said.

—

The woman with the Princess' body dared to defy Cecilia over something so silly as a burnt-out village, that Cecilia only destroyed because it happened to be there.

"I will never stand down."

The Princess swapped bodies with the mercenary when they both faced death together; the original princess was dead. It was a surprise to Cecilia to hear those words from the mouth of the Princess' body. The sword of meteorite steel had been a matter of supreme indifference to her the first time she saw it futilely raised against her.

The little mouse girl hid when Cecilia killed her father and burnt down her village. She was apparently a grown warrior now. Place one human in horrific battle conditions that he could not end no matter how strong a swordsman he was, and he could become a delightful nihilist. Place another human in horrific battle conditions when she was but a child, and she became an irritating thorn in Cecilia's side when she swapped bodies with another pawn in the scheme.

Cecilia raised her unstoppable magical power and sent the mouse woman into endless torment. How could she have realised that those fools would approach the secret of her essence, her Anak Maya. She brushed away the shards of the armour designed especially to hide it and prepared to cause great pain.

—

Cecilia's exile was the vilest day of her existence. She was the vortex in the galaxy, the canker in the bud, the worm in the fruit, the anomaly who was never supposed to exist. It had taken her people long millennia to see her nature, but at last they found her unique traits.

Sadism. Selfishness. Sociopathy.

Cecilia's people did not have words for these traits. They created them for her, using the tongues of the human people, who were said to be a lot like her.

Cecilia couldn't see the resemblance herself.

The tribunal—another human concept—reviewed her many crimes. Cecilia would smile at some of those memories. She had blunted incredible potential to nothingness, secretly broken many star systems, and sent subtle pushes that made infinite others weep in glorious destruction.

Cecilia's people called themselves the Light People, insofar as that name was the most inferior minds could make of it. A long time ago they transcended their origins on a galaxy far away in space and time. They gained marvellous knowledge and joined their hearts together to fly between all the stars in the universe. The Light People all felt as one, and could not cause each other any pain because each would feel it. Their voices created peace in the galaxy and sung with the stars. War, hatred, suffering, and lying were all unknown and alien concepts to them. The Light People remained peaceful observers of other life forms who had not yet transcended and they lived in harmony and beauty.

Until Cecilia came to exist, the cuckoo in the nest, the wolf in the sheepfold, the shark in shallow waters. A mutation gave her the power that other species had without thinking about it: the power to conceal her true self from the other people of her kind. The Light People mistook her for all they thought she was, when in truth she was amusing herself with the unlimited gifts of her people.

The human planet was one of Cecilia's petty crimes: a thing she had not thought about for more than an instant in her perception. The Light People knew that the humans made technological discoveries that could someday lead them to join the stars as well, but humans suffered from genetic faults that led them to cruelty and hatred. Some Light People spoke that the humans should be guided into peaceful ways; Cecilia spoke for non-intervention, in order to be amused when they destroyed themselves. She deceived the Light People for the fun of it and the humans used technology to the last drop and eradicated themselves from time and space. After that the Light People created a closed world folded away from time and space and allowed a small remnant of humans to repopulate their zoo.

The tribunal decided that Cecilia would be stripped of most of her powers and exiled to this world, since apparently they felt her traits were closest to those of humankind. She lost most of her gifts except for the immortality of her people, and was confined to a disgustingly weak human shape at first. Her essence was stored in her Anak Maya.

Cecilia screamed and raved and went into madness when she was first cast away. She had no connection left to the Light People, to the rest of the universe, and no powers oustide a tiny weak form. If Cecilia ever had nightmares, that moment would be her chief one: the first time when she was locked away from all her power and confined to fragile humanity.

She starved herself and beat her shape almost to death on the ground for the first centuries, but her Anak Maya would not let her die. She had no idea how to access even the least power. She wandered, broken, until she learnt how to exercise her amusement to cause pain in the human world. She began to notice fragments of the lost technology. Over time, Cecilia gathered more and more fractions of power to herself. She became a witch, a sorceress; and then at last she found Kaito and his dream to use the lost technology to destroy his own world.

"I know you're not human," Kaito said once in the dark, bending close to her ear, smiling softly. "I imagine you're not from anywhere I understand at all. But I forgive you."

Teoria would destroy everything on the human world that came from the human world. Cecilia's Anak Maya was able to survive such a thing. As long as Cecilia's gemstone remained intact she would watch and laugh, and if she was fortunate, she would be free to wander the universe again and watch as more things writhed in pain and burnt to ashes...

—

Cecilia seared the stump of Kaito's shoulder.

"A terrible injury," she breathed.

"We have not lost," he replied through gritted teeth. "Only I will need you to do the fighting."

"That is not so, Prince," Cecilia assured him. "I can be with you each moment from now on."

She crafted a new arm from metal parts, modelled from one of Akamashi's crude attempts. She added something extra, an edge that ensured her proximal control and kept her safe in other ways. She couldn't have Kaito change his mind amid his newest dreadful pain.

"There," Cecilia said, and the glow in his palm activated. "You will fight, Kaito. I have made your new arm a match for even the berserk state in Princess Alita's genetic defence system."

The tendrils in his flesh rooted themselves into his central nervous system; they would never be displaced. The Prince of Forland was a perfect ally.

"Do you feel pain, my prince?" Cecilia asked Kaito.

"Yes."

Cecilia smiled with happiness. "Good."

—

Milano opened her mouth. She walked toward Falis, sidestepping her sword.

"Please, will you come back with me?" she said. They walked together, back to the doors of Teoria and to the central control system. Milano looked into the Princess' eyes.

"I love you," she said.

She kissed Falis full on the mouth. The Princess dropped her sword and returned the embrace. They had won; it was a victory, but not without pain. Milano held Falis gently, drawing her into a deeper caress. Falis closed her eyes.

Then Milano stabbed Falis in the back with her own wazikashi.

Falis lay white-faced and strapped to the table, bleeding almost to death. Cecilia busied herself over the body of the Princess who was key to Teoria. She was delighted that she had lent her true Anak Maya to Kaito's arm. Her control had turned to concealment and an eventual victory. She would remake this human girl from her inside out, thanks to the gemstone inside her stomach. It was charming and amusing to see the Princess' pain at the time the girl she thought she loved betrayed her brutally.

"Mi...lano. _Not_ Milano," the Princess stammered weakly. Cecilia tightened the straps around her and fixed Teoria's controls. However had the mouse woman guessed?

"No, I'm only an intruder. But I plan to stay inside Milano for a very long time. I won't die." Cecilia held the wazikashi to her body's throat. The true Milano's soul had been screaming inside her, very enjoyably, ever since the moment she had seized control. It had been especially fun to make the girl stab her lover in the back. "I can hurt this girl's body. I can kill this girl in a single moment. If you try to stop me, I will make her suffer beyond your imagination."

Cecilia walked leisurely to Teoria's controls. Kaito's body was still unconscious, which was fine for her needs. She no longer controlled the arm and his power was exhausted. She affixed his left hand to the plate that recognised his genetic line of Forland royalty.

"Teoria..."

_Destroy this world and everything of it!_

Milano's scream seized her throat. Cecilia paused in disbelief. Her control could not be overcome by this silly human! Milano's soul flew back into her eyes like a solar storm. Cecilia felt the roaring tide of human feelings she'd never understood. She felt the stupid words like love, courage, friendship, passion, family, country—Cecilia always felt these were only words for the selfishness and cruelty most humans never acknowledged. But for this, for Forland, the mere weak human gained some strength. Milano stepped back into her own body.

"I can't hold her back for long," Milano said. She unstrapped Falis, working desperately with her hands. "You need to kill me. I already signed up once to die for Forland, remember? You can kill—you can kill the gemstone in my stomach. Your sword is meteorite steel, it doesn't come from this world. Something not of this world can kill Cecilia. She has reason to be frightened of you and she doesn't understand anything of humans' true feelings." She wrapped Falis' loose fingers around her sword. "Everything is going to be all..."

And Cecilia was back behind Milano's eyes, wrapping rage and hatred and power around herself like the powers of hell. Never mind what happened; she was back now and her enemy was still under her control.

The Princess smiled. She dropped her sword. "Kill the girl," she said. "Milano thinks I'm a murderer and hates me, let her die. I should've known you weren't her when you touched me. Hell, let everything go. The one thing I wanted isn't mine. Maybe one last kiss..."

The woman reached up, faint. Cecilia fell into the Princess' arms and let pain mix with their contact—biting cruelly at the Princess' lip, squeezing Milano's fingers around the Princess' terrible wounds. She understood that humans were selfish and cruel above all. At last this woman was showing it. The Princess seemed to welcome this pain.

And Falis' arms wrapped around Milano's back in a death grip that would not let her go, or let Cecilia reach for weapons to torture Milano's body.

Cecilia shrieked—a curse on the limitations of her shape! This body was not strong enough. Falis walked slowly, step by step, to the Teoria controls, carrying her enemy each step of the way. Blood soaked both of them.

"I'll break free and hurt her," Cecilia called, "I'll cut out her eyes and her lips and her tongue and her toes and make her eat them, I'll burn her pretty skin and chop her pretty hair and give her syphilis and the plague, I'll rip out her fingernails from the roots and make her teeth into a necklace."

Falis held desperately onto her arms no matter how she struggled.

"Teoria, remove everything inhuman from Milano and don't hurt her when you do it!" Falis screamed.

Milano had the odd sensation of being surrounded by light, a colour she couldn't identify, and then she was lying on the ground with blankness inside her mind and a small glowing gemstone on the ground with a string of vomit hanging from it. She turned her face away from it, burying her head in her hands, and a moment later Falis' sword of meteorite steel cut the Anak Maya open. Milano listened to the pieces shatter in splinters. A beam of light rose from the gemstone, spiraling into absolute nothingness. Milano thought that she heard a final, long, desperate scream.

Falis' face was ghastly as she bent over her. "You're okay. Don't...I don't think I've a lot of time."

Milano rushed to support her. The wounds were grievous, deadly, and Falis had opened them with all that she had done. If the Princess' strange powers were still working to heal her body, Milano did not think they would function in time. Falis grinned past spots of blood on her teeth.

"There's stories," Falis said, "stories that jinns, magical spirits from beyond this world, grant you three wishes always. I've used up two. Let me give you what you've always wanted. Here's my third..."

She laid a hand on the panel and smiled grimly. Circuits and lines of golden light grew across her skin, all the power of Teoria resting within her. Milano reached toward her, not knowing what she was about to do.

"Teoria, heal up this body and bring back Milano Entolasia's true Alita Forland inside it!" Falis wished.

—


	12. Negotiating

This great shudder of the world was far worse than that in response to Falis' first wish. Milano watched as the lights of Teoria washed over them. They blinked out in darkness as if they'd used too much power even to keep on. A strange icy cold wind blew, as if it had come from the lands of the dead. Milano was empty, bereft of so much.

_Oh, Falis...Alita...I never wished either of you to die! I was the one who should have perished!_

Milano could have wept, but the icy winds stole away any tears from her eyes. She lay in the darkness and waited for the winter storms to slip by. She heard an eerie wailing and sobbing, a high clear noise that receded and grew by turns. She seemed to feel the very earth below them crack open and close in a new shape, the world changing in unbearable ways.

And then the pale ghost of Alita of Forland, her white dress stained by war and blood, walked through the halls of Teoria.

She was flesh and blood, but her eyes were like a ghost. She stood like Alita, unmistakably, bearing her quiet and melancholy kindness instead of Falis' uncompromising warrior's stance. Her fair hair fell softly around her face in an ethereal cloud.

"I was dead," Alita said in the saddest of voices, "I died. I remember dying. I should be dead."

Milano stood. "It's me." She wrapped the Princess in her arms. Alita's flesh was very cold, but she was real and herself.

"Yes. Milano. The Teoria changed the world. I can feel it." Alita looked wonderingly at the devices that surrounded them. She waved a hand at a set of vast glass globes. They lit up with colours and motions. "Do you see, Milano? Do you see what has been done?"

It was a dizzying vista that passed through the globes. Milano gaped at the colours: she saw stars in one, stars as if from a close distance, the deep blackness of space, unfamiliar skies that spread further than she could imagine. Then in the second she saw Forland Castle from the sky, people scurrying around it like bees in a hive. And in the third, she saw a bird's eye view of their whole land, the boundaries of Forland drawn on a living map. She gasped in wonder. If only Falis could see this vision of the country she protected.

_Falis, love, I never meant..._

As Milano watched Forland's map, she saw that it ended sharply in the same borders that the maps did. Blank earth fell down the sides like a cross section made of dark brown glass. Empty space surrounded Forland. Then again the distance increased to space and stars, and Milano saw a Forland separated from the rest of the world: a Forland ripped away to be held in a glass bubble, floating in space and time like an ant suspended in amber.

"Forland is preserved," Alita said softly. "Preserved in time and space. No one will move forward; no one will move back. Nothing will grow and nothing decay. No babies will be born and no grandparents will die. Only here by the Teoria can anything shift or change."

Alita turned back to Milano and gently brushed her forehead with the tips of her fingers. She smiled a sad smile.

"Something was taken from you with the second wish. Can you feel it?" Alita asked. Milano waited, confused. Alita shook her head. "As for the third wish, I am alive but I know I should be dead. I still feel the one joined to my soul. Come. Let's open the doors."

Alita touched the doorframe and it readily opened. Dominikov, Evita, Akamashi, Pete, and Jodo were waiting for them; Pete carried Milano's grandfather in his arms.

"Falis, you must have saved the day!" Evita cheered. "Did you kill the wicked Prince? Did you discover Teoria? This is _wonderful_ , Father, isn't it splendid? Teoria at last! Everything that you have ever dreamt of..." Her voice trailed off when she saw how others were looking at her. Akamashi's attention was drawn by the vast globes and she followed his gaze, then gasped and blanched an ivory paleness. "I...can definitely see that something's _very_ wrong—" Evita gabbled.

"Princess," Pete said glumly. He recognised Alita standing there.

"You were kind to me when I was alive," Alita said gently. Her eyes fell on Pete, Jodo, Dominikov, and then Akamashi. "Doctor Akamashi," she said formally, "you have nothing to fear from me while you are with these people." Then Evita took a quick, puzzled half-step away from her. Alita followed her. "They gave you my body," she said, "and so we're family. I need you." She took both of Evita's hands in her own. Evita shivered as if the chill of the grave had passed up her veins.

Akamashi stared red-faced at the globes, his eyes protruding from his head. "That ignorant idiotic barbaric blundering mercenary, she's ruined everything!" he cried at the top of his voice. "She separated Forland from the rest of the world, restored the dead princess, turned time and space topsy-turvy, and Teoria only knows what else! How to fix it I..."

"Father, you're a scientist, you must know!" Evita begged.

"I don't!" Akamashi snapped. "I wanted more access to Teoria in order to understand it, and I doubt I could understand enough in the limited time I gather that we have! Do you think it's sustainable to preserve a chunk of land without input or output in the same piece of time and space for any period of time, even without what it's done to the Princess' body?"

Alita held up a gentle hand, which quelled the noise. "I will be grateful for your help," she told Evita. "We're waiting for one more." The Princess stood gracefully, gazing at the ancient devices as if she knew them already. These legends were locked into Alita's blood and into all the stories and secrets she was whispered as a child. This place was the kingdom of the key, the Princess of Forland who knew all the stories. Her calm, cool eyes met all there was to see. She faced the open doors, awaiting what would come with a quiet, dignified resolve.

Something shuffled down the hallway, cold and already dead. Doors creaked open, letting heavy night air slowly breathe into Forland Castle. Nothing and no one raised a hand against the shape that stalked through the castle halls. Night covered the dark form that walked, and the trails of a winding-sheet flew like a ghost behind her.

"Hey, onion-head Akamashi," the ghost said, "I heard you taking my name in vain and thought I'd drop in."

The dead body belonged to Falis: a small, dark woman.

She was once the tiny girl who hid when her father was killed, the child who walked a thousand miles on burnt feet to find her mother the travelling warrior and begin a path to learn how to fight. The woman who bore her father's sword, Princess-of-the-cranes. The woman who became a bladesmaster so unsurpassed that she won the service and friendship of two powerful creations of old Teoria, the giant and the shinigami. The mercenary who was strong, and whose strength was never used to harm the young or innocent. Whose strength was used to save and protect Forland, when a princess gave her own body and fate to be the collateral.

Jodo and Milano had no time nor opportunity to bury Alita as a princess should be buried, with pomp and ceremony and in the ancient stone halls of her ancestors. Instead the body was wrapped in a simple linen winding-sheet, a pomade of myrrh and pomegranate oil hung about the neck to ward off decay, and a rough burial place dug hastily in the night. They buried Alita in a peaceful grove she had loved when she was alive, within sight of the southern wall of the royal tombs.

Now the souls of Alita and Falis swapped once more. Falis, in her dead body, walked the earth, driven by her indefatigable will. She wore the winding-sheet around her shape, the myrrh and pomegranate at her neck. Her dark hair grew wild and long around shrunken skin, her nails claws beyond their shrivelled beds. Dark blood had pooled at the bottom of her body, turning the underside of her skin black. Her flesh was putrefying, swollen and bruised. But a will of iron and magnificent courage held Falis' bright soul within even a decaying cage of flesh.

Milano tried to show by look that she was not afraid, that no matter the form Falis was Falis and she was there to help her, but the warrior's dead yellow eyes were drawn to Alita.

"The collateral is no more," Alita said, "and all debts are paid between us. But when we fell from the cliffs in Erure Forest and faced death together, our souls and fates were linked from that moment onward. Will you help, not out of debt, but out of your will?"

Falis didn't hesitate. "I'd do this without asking. Go ahead." She spoke harshly, with a voice like old creaking bones.

Evita raised a hand. "I think I understand some of the problem," she said. "Teoria is now constantly used and strained to maintain the artificial preservation conditions around Forland only, when the larger biosphere cannot be used to help sustain a closed thermodynamic environment. Additionally, Teoria is also sustaining two souls that it should not sustain, specifically, a consciousness that has experienced death and a consciousness that is now in a dead body. This load is achievable by the wonders of Teoria, but it cannot be sustained. However, to restore things the way they were will also place an incredible and probably impossible strain on the Teoria." Evita's curious eyes took in the foreign devices. "How was that assessment, Father?"

Milano looked at the surfaces of Teoria—some covered with dust, some with odd patterns that perhaps she herself could have removed with a simple scrubbing brush. "Is it possible that Teoria itself...hasn't been _cleaned_ for the six hundred and seventy-two years of the Shandy Era?" she said. Milano could imagine the ancients making the same assumptions that she herself made, that it was fine to do up a room and a bed in a way that took into account that you thought you'd be returning there tomorrow and the next day as well.

Alita's mouth shifted upward. "As time passes even Teoria can perish. Everything dies in its season."

"The power levels to do this will be great," Akamashi said. "Are you sure you want to destroy Teoria? Even for these people's sake?"

He pointed to Pete and Dominikov. "What do you think sustains these cyborgs' existence in this world? Leftover Teoria! What will I need when my daughter catches a cloning disease that could kill her young? Teoria treatment! Do not worry, Evita, I would always make sure that you were treated well. Use caution, Princess—do not destroy it!"

"Master," Dominikov said, "do what you must."

"We have lived a long time," Pete said.

"I've lived a short," Evita volunteered.

"But if you do nothing," Milano couldn't help pointing out, "it will be even worse."

Evita laughed. "So be it. For my father and for Science. Maybe there's a happy ending to all this after all." She winked at Alita. "Princess, I never told you my name. I am Evita Ana Yuna Akamashi, named for my own family and for myself. I have a life of my own, not just yours. And I would like to keep it, if you don't mind!"

Milano heard one last word from Alita.

"Milano, I don't think we will be able to restore your gnome's gift. Is this fine?"

"Of course it's fine! I'd give up much more than that. Alita, stop being a silly girl and save Forland already!" Milano said, too sharply, hoping against hope that her nagging could somehow bring a smile to Alita's face. Instead there was only that sad, lost look from a quiet grave.

"Slowly guide Teoria toward a restoration of the world and our own time and space," Alita said. "Let what we make be gentle. With three hearts to guide it, we can search for the true wishes to ask of it."

—

Milano watched, amazed, as Teoria's lines and charts converged on the three figures. It was a beautiful dance, and then the lines became jagged and unbearably complex and terrifying...

Falis' courage and heart sustained them, while Evita's memory guided the tiniest of details, and Alita's gentle soul flew between and beyond them and above and around it all as if this were the task she was born to accomplish.

Milano held her grandfather's arm, a spectator and a witness, wishing for the lives of the three figures at the centre of the storm. She and her grandfather were nestled close to Dominikov and Pete, and even Akamashi chose to stand close to other people. Teoria shuddered and rippled. The strange gimmors and devices flowed into impossibly twisted shapes, as if they extended not only in the familiar height and width and depth but into time and stranger dimensions. Lights grew to unbearable brightness and then faded into nothing. Glass baubles blew out and widening cracks ran across the walls.

Milano felt constant earthquakes rumbling far below their feet, the earth grinding and crying out for mercy. She saw fires burst out in the halls and meet with ice and water and white fog released from pipes opposite them. One unnaturally coloured flame burned even within a coating of translucent ice, until both vanished and left nothing but a coating of soot on the wall. She saw moss and ivy grow all across a wall, spread seeds and spores, and fade again within a matter of seconds. She saw the imprints of trees of kinds she didn't know written against the ceiling, replaced by star-maps and then an outline of the bones of a giant being. She smelt something like boracic powder, then salt, and next the scent of spring strawberries from the east. Then Milano smelt wet copper that reminded her of blood, and saw liquid dripping over a giant piece of metal that became detached and described a deadly bounce across the floor...

Milano ducked. Pete rushed away and came back, carrying Kaito as a bundle in his hands. The traitor prince didn't wake. He was more sheltered here next to the door, while Teoria fell apart at its seams. Milano held her grandfather and set her back to a spray of glass shards. Pete grunted when the brunt of it hit him. He and Dominikov protected them. But Pete's purple skin looked blanched like a cooked aubergine in the flickering, fiery light, and Dominikov's skeleton was drawn and chalky around him.

Evita recited words and lines and mathematical equations. Lights flashed letters across her skin too impossibly fast for anyone to read. She muttered to herself as her eidetic memory strove to capture an entire land, an entire world. Falis set her teeth, her eyes closed but her head at the same alert unyielding angle as when she was fighting, black corpse's hair blowing about her face in a strange wind. Alita, her pale clothes flowing around her like the wings of a dove, calm and kind and yet terrible as death.

Milano no longer had the visions in glass that had exhilarated her for such a short time. But on what remained of the shattered glass globes she saw flickers, fragments of greenery and earth and familiar Forland rambling roses. Grass sprang up even here, below Milano's feet, and the long high corridors of Teoria too vast and impossible to fit in Forland Castle seemed to spiral away to nothingness. Metal buckled, overheated, and shattered in the devices.

Akamashi cried out. "Those are priceless! Don't destroy them!" He ran. Pete tried to hold him back. Milano saw a crashing beam behind Akamashi, and then a wall of fire and smoke. She held onto her grandfather.

Next Milano heard Evita's cry: " _Father!_ " The circle of three was broken, Evita running off after Akamashi. Milano couldn't see them. Falis harshly swore, but Alita spoke out in soft tones that nevertheless echoed across each wall.

"Let Teoria gently fade. Let Forland be restored. Let no one human ever have this power to harm. Parts of Teoria shall fall all over the world like rain. All humans will discover it for themselves. The world will be restored to rights. Falis, Milano, friends. Friends. Everything will be set right..."

Alita raised a hand. A scent like wood-daisy pollen seemed to fill the place, and Milano felt herself falling into a dark, peaceful rest.

—

She woke in what looked like a broad brown storeroom, paint peeling from its walls, the size of the rest of Forland Castle. There was no obvious trace of Teoria in this room, but strange shadows were washed into the walls, shapes like indelible lightning and wings. Pete and Dominikov slept next to each other and Milano could hear her grandfather's breathing.

Alita bent over her—no, Falis. It was Falis. This was the Princess' living body—but Falis was the tenant—

"Look, Milano, look here—you're all right. That's good. There's nothing either of us can do for...for her."

Falis dragged Milano along. Akamashi had carried devices in his hands; they were spilt around him where he knelt on the stone storeroom floor. The hand of his daughter Evita reached out to save him, but a burning girder had crushed her from above. She lay still and glassy-eyed. The girl who wanted to live was dead. She'd rescued her father at the cost of her life.

"And the Princess," Falis said, "the true Princess. Come on, we have to hurry to see if she's..."

Milano and Falis ran, madly, to the place Alita was buried. They feared findng a suffocated thing clawing up through the ground—a dead woman with glinting, living eyes—and they dug frantically down through the earth with their hands.

Milano saw nothing but a skeleton. As soon as sunlight fell upon it, she and Falis saw the bones crumble into dust. Alita's grave was empty. In the dawn the motes of dust became rainbow lights, flying away into the world on a morning wind.

—


	13. Vitality

Pete and Dominikov would die, but like the way humans would die, it did not have to be right now. The people of Forland were almost used to seeing the gentle giant and the deadly shinigami constantly at Queen Alita's side when they announced they would travel.

"We'll return, Master. With a few new tales to tell," Dominikov said. He shouldered his scythe. "I've heard almost all the goblins and beasties and trolls are dead since Teoria went. It's a good opportunity to find out what last things are lurking."

"Before next winter we'll be on our way home again," Pete promised.

"Just make sure you come back," Falis said. "Take care of yourselves." She held her shoulders low. "Are you mad I made you mortal?"

"We've met plenty of mortals," Dominikov said. A humourless laugh echoed below his mask. "We're not vivophobic. Perhaps the world is more exciting this way."

"This was because of one of my wishes," Falis said under her breath. "Do you feel sorry for what I did, Milano?"

—

The Queen of Forland received her crown again in a quiet ceremony, with plainly dressed mine workers standing alongside elaborately clothed bishops and aristocrats, as well as cyborgs created by Teoria, circus gnomes, major-domos, maids, and soldiers. The crown jewels rested truly on her head, returned to the Queen by a humble miner who had helped her at a time of need. The sparkling, soft lights of Our Lady of the Rainbows' stained glass windows shone around Falis as she knelt.

"In God's name we crown Queen Alita. May her reign be long and may Forland know freedom and peace."

Falis stood gravely and showed herself to her people. There was no wild cheering, but she accepted her land and her people accepted her. On the same day as her second coronation the Queen christened the foundations of a new mercy hospital in Forland town square, for there was much building and rebuilding to be done.

Privately, the Queen muttered to Jodo—

"When can I get this heavy cutlery off my head?"

—

The day after the coronation, the soldiers who were killed by Falis—in fact, killed by the failsafes built into the Princess Alita's body—were buried with the highest of military honours. The Queen herself presided.

In the official story, mad Kaito gave the wicked order to capture Alita and because of that the Princess had no choice but to kill Forland men. The families of the dead accepted that without question, far more readily and faithfully than Milano had done.

The mourners were the old veteran Jontom's three children, who'd been Milano's babysitters and playmates for years of her childhood. Aldrias' frail father and his buxom, miserable fiancée. Young Cheruin's mother and his four sisters, all of the sisters so much like him in looks as to hurt anyone's heart. And among the soldiers who could be present, so many empty spaces were already left in the ranks from other recent bloodshed. The colour of funeral clothes washed over the gathering like a vast pale river, sweeping all the landscape far below water.

_For the sake of our loyalty to Forland, we bear this time of mourning._

Milano swallowed her own tears while Jontom's daughter Pannyris, a tall spare woman who'd been a castle cellarmaid for thirteen years, wept in her arms for the funeral and a long time after it. A solitary guilt was written on Queen Falis' face; she left immediately after her part in the formal ceremony, bearing herself like a warrior.

—

Milano, dressed as a castle maid once again, carried a neatly laid tea-tray with a cup of tea and a few small fish rolls on it. The guard on the door recognised her on sight—perhaps, Milano thought, they very much needed to improve security in that respect—and let her into the small, sparsely furnished room.

Akamashi sat hunched on the bed as if he hadn't moved for days. He watched Milano place down the tray but said nothing.

"I forgive you for what you've done. Not for yourself but for me," Milano said. "May you find peace."

She took a seat opposite him on an old dusty stool. She waited for him to say something, anything. Tracks of dried tears seemed to run down his cheeks—as many tears had been shed by others for his actions and the deaths he had caused.

Akamashi spoke without inflection, watching Milano as if he thought she'd spring at him at any moment. "I was raised in Forland Orphanage from when I was born. I never had anyone. The King sponsored my studies and made me a royal scientist. After a time I learnt how I could create a family of my own. Ana, Yuna, and Evita were my children, my only family.

"Now my daughters are dead and my studies are gone. What else is there waiting for me?"

"You have several choices," Milano said steadily. She waited until he had taken his first sip of tea before she spoke. "The first choice is house arrest for the rest of your days. Forland will need scientists more than ever now that fragments of Teoria can be discovered by anyone in the world. Your duties will be to repair Pete and Dominikov whenever they come to you, educate new scientists as your pupils, and write texts about your knowledge that everyone can understand. And you must never build any living weapons ever again."

He nodded slowly. "And the second?"

"My grandmother, the first Milano Entolasia, was something of a herbalist. Although I have never used it before, she taught me how to make hemlock tea."

Akamashi, startled, stared down at his cup. He pushed his tea away as if he wasn't thirsty any more. "The other choices?"

"You could try again to kill more innocent people and be killed by the Princess," Milano said. "Or then there's public hanging as a traitor in the open square."

"Your preferred option?" Akamashi asked her.

"I was looking forward for a long time to seeing you hanged," Milano confessed, "and I was hoping that it would be slow. But now I've seen enough death, so I've changed my mind. Choose wisely. Choose what...your daughters would have wanted for you."

She hastily picked up the tea-tray and went out, letting her conquest over her lasting bitterness stay.

—

"And the wishes?" Falis asked, walking in the gardens, her face twisted on itself. "Are you going to tell me off for the things I got wrong?"

"The world has changed and we must be ready for it," Milano said. "Teoria faded away and now belongs to any human who finds it, to the whole world.

"We know now that humans destroyed the entire planet. When humans and Teoria ruined the world with endless warfare, the Light People appeared, a strength stronger than all the robots and all the scientists combined. They rebuilt the world and sealed a few humans away, also sealing Teoria. It was kind of them to allow humanity to live, though they treated us like pets in a zoo," Milano said. She'd thought about this ever since Alita died for the second time, ever since Cecilia sunk her bitter dark presence into her mind. She pieced together her own human reasoning about what was done. "The aliens also exiled a criminal of their people to our world because they felt her personality was close to ours. That was not kind, though Kaito would have sought to destroy the world with Teoria whether he received Cecilia's help or not.

"I believe most humans are nothing like Cecilia," Milano said. Even bounty hunters from outside the kingdom; kind circus folk; clones created to destroy the realm; miners with little past cause to love the kingdom; even bakers and housekeepers and maids and street-sweepers who gave their loyalty to Forland. And princesses who gave up their lives and souls for the sake of others. "I also believe that her people the Light People will come back, perhaps someday soon," Milano said. "They'll realise that Teoria is broken and this world is no longer sealed away.

"But that's how it should be, because Alita set us free. If humans are trying to destroy each other again, then the Light People will treat us like pets and lock us up again. Instead, what we're fighting for is peace. With fragments of Teoria scattered around the world, we'll all gain old knowledge and new knowledge, and hope for the wisdom to use it better this time. That way, this era will become a truly human era, when humans are free and at peace.

"We have a lot of work to do in Forland, Your Majesty. Let's keep at it."

—

Milano stood by Falis when she pronounced a sentence on Kaito in his sister's name. The former prince had taken a long time to recover from his injuries and from the removal of his metal arm, which they had taken good care to destroy. Kaito knelt before the queen of Forland, a fallen man with one arm left and a long dark scar across his face, a mark of Cain.

"Your sister loved you," Falis said. "This is the sentence: you're a ronin now. Your titles are stripped forever from you. You're banished from Forland. You won't be allowed back under pain of death, until you have saved as many lives as you and Cecilia and Akamashi murdered in the coup. Do you accept this task?"

It was a difficult, if not impossible, goal. But there was justice in it and a little hope. Kaito's face was resigned, his expression and voice clear and cold.

"Queen Falis, thief of my sister's birthright," he said, "you may have become better than some for Forland's throne. Let it end this way. Farewell, Milano Entolasia. Remember me when you remember your brothers."

—

Milano hemmed the last seam on the Queen's new dress and went over the seating chart for tomorrow's banquet once more. Councillor Bregird and his wife Orrell, heads of the newly formed Forland Union of Miners, were the guests of honour. Queen Alita's council was very different in makeup to those that had gone before. The nobles must know that the people were to have a much stronger voice from now on, but the Queen had to continue to win support from nobles such as Lord Iexec who valued the rule of law. Diplomacy could create as many subtle and difficult knots as it could solve, so it was important to seat the right people by exactly the right people to cause as few disputes as possible. Dowager Lady Iexec couldn't possibly be placed next to Lord Francis, since although the lord was courteous he would never speak loudly enough for the elderly lady's ear trumpet. In fact, Milano thought, the Dowager was from the same area of country as the commoner councillor Mrs Fujofer, a woman who'd risen from dairy farmer to wealthy merchant. High aristocrats usually had a surprising amount of common ground with the maids and farmers they saw in daily life, and perhaps Mrs Fujofer's loud and cheery tones were exactly the compensation... Her hands busied themselves folding silk stockings while she reviewed the complex gathering.

Falis breezed into her room, carrying her sword after a nightly practice. Milano put away the articles of clothing and slipped the rest of her material back into her apron.

"Going so soon?" Falis caught at her arm. "You don't talk about anything else but work with me. It's true I let your Alita die and did worse than that. But in that case, you should go work for another kingdom where you wouldn't have to put up with me. Work for peace with someone you can stand the sight of."

"No. It's been busy here, that's all." Milano looked longingly at her seating plan in her pocket. She'd made herself think about what had to be done each waking moment, and it spared her from painful memories. She held out her right hand. "Come into the gardens with me. It's been a long time since we could relax."

Frogs croaked in the ornamental castle ponds and somewhere in the distance a nightingale sang. Beds of purple phlox were black as ink in the faint moonlight. The ground was damp, a soft mist fell, and at last it seemed to be a kind, calm evening.

"What you and what Alita did to use up Teoria set the world free," Milano said. "Do you want to know why I'm sure Alita made you change places at the end? It's because, wherever Alita went when she was dead, it was peaceful. She was sad all the time that she was returned. My friend is dead. You helped her when you tried one last time.

"It's me who must ask forgiveness for the words I said to you," Milano said. She called Falis a murderer who should never be forgiven. She was wrong a thousand times.

"I already knew you were sorry about that." Falis met her eyes. "I kissed you when you weren't yourself. For some of it I didn't know."

"That too was what you had to do," Milano said. She and Falis stood together, but for now slivers and splinters inside them could not let them close the gap. The raging fire once between them now felt like cold ash.

"Doing good work in diplomacy requires you to know your people," Milano said. A pair of silver dragonflies fluttered in the air before her, leaving behind trails of glimmering dew in the dark. "I won't neglect you again."

"Deal," Falis said easily. "I save the kingdom by fighting, you save the kingdom by etiquette. Sound fair to you, Milano?"

Some wounds heal clean and other wounds scar, but human nature is resilient; from grey ashes many things can kindle...

Milano gave a simple nod to that bargain, although it seemed that once more she felt warmth and light in her face. She and Falis lingered in the garden, past the honeysuckle vines and rambling roses, through the soft purple hyacinths and by the prized vegetable garden, past the plump yellow summer marrows and by the upper kitchen quarters. Milano slipped an arm below Falis' elbow and drew her toward the light.

"Come back in, Princess—my grandfather will have some fine tea."

—

_The End._

—


End file.
